We were well and truly on the ocean road that would take us on a scenic drive all the way north to Canada so the first thing we did was… get off the road and head back into the heart of California to take in a number of well known sites including Yosemite, Sequoia National Park and Death Valley (with DH at the wheel driving in a straight line is just not going to happen). It was a great plan but nobody told us about the snow in California might impact your driving options. There was a lot of conversation about a 4 year drought that was impacting the State, but as we headed to Yosemite, the park was being buried in snow and roads were being restricted- vehicles were required to have chains installed or at least have them on board.

Snow storms in California? Who knew? We didn't have chains, and the fines for not having them vary up to $5,000. And having recently made a science out of avoiding snow storms and cold weather, we weren’t really keen on slip-sliding our way through the Sierra Nevada mountain range (just admitting this may jeopardise our Canadian citizenship).

With a recorded high temperature of 57 °C (the hottest atmospheric temperature ever recorded on earth), we were pretty sure that Death Valley wasn’t going to give us any snow problems so we thought we would start there and later work our way along the east side of the Sierra Nevadas looking for a clear-day opportunity to jump into the iconic parks (can you say you’ve seen California if you haven’t been to Yosemite??).

We both wanted to experience Death Valley but for very different reasons. DH was channeling her inner wild west Calamity Jane, and the valley was the one place you didn’t want to be in any western movie, because sooner or later your horse would die, and you’d be crawling along the parched ground, begging for water in a scratchy voice. Somewhat counter to its Hollywood portrayal, Death Valley was given its forbidding name by a group of pioneers lost here in the winter of 1849-1850. It probably didn’t deserve the moniker because only one of the group actually died here, although they all assumed that the valley would be their grave. So it wasn’t the end-of-the-road for gunfighters, cowboys, and prospectors that DH had expected but she did get the bonus of the tail end of a unique desert bloom which gave us the rare sight of flowers in an otherwise barren landscape. Did we mention the heat? In the summer of 2001, there was a stretch of 154 consecutive days with temperatures of 100 °F or above. Yikes.

I was here for the altitude. Death Valley's Badwater Salt Basin is the point of the lowest elevation in North America, at 282 feet below sea level, and just up the road is the lowest elevation golf course in the world, Furnace Creek. In Bolivia we had played on the highest golf course in the world so it only seemed natural that we play on the lowest one as well- I’m not sure it really counts since I just hit a bucket of balls at their driving range but future storytelling will omit that small detail. It was a little too hot for a round of golf and DH was much more interested in scouring the desert landscape looking for crawling human skeletons.