Zabriskie Point

We drove today from Ridgecrest to Furnace Creek. Ridgecrest's one distinguishing feature is the nearby China Lake Naval Weapons Testing Centre. As China Lake contains not a drop of water but acres of salt flats, it is not a place for practicing marine manouvres, but I've no doubt the Navy know what they are doing. The motel restaurant featured photographs of Tomahawk Missiles. Enough said.

Travelling north past Trona (see yesterday) and Searles Lake Borax Works up into the Panamint Valley, one sees derelict, rundown, backwoods America of a kind we never see in the UK. Flimsily built timber houses left as little more than skeletons. Barber shops that look as if they haven't seen scissors wielded in anger since the gold rush. Railtracks blocked with padlocked gates. There was even tumbleweed.

But the geology was fascinating. Mountain faces zigzag striped with strata of every colour. Giant washouts where flash floods had torn strips through the sand. And very little wildlife at all. Apart from the surprise appearance of a desert tortoise about to cross the road, and immediately withdrawing into his shell at our approach. Not that his shell would have saved him if I'd run over him. Then another fifty yards further on. Then no more.

We climbed the steep pass, peaking at 5,000 feet before descending to Stovepipe Wells, and we were at last in Death Valley itself. More coloured stripey rockfaces like Panamint Valley, then the shock of the Mesquite Dunes. Rolling, curving acres of sand, shaped by the wind.

We went down to the Devil's Golf Course, where spiky pinnacles of salt, still growing today, look like nothing I've ever seen. Further down the valley to Badwater Creek, over 300 feet below sea level. Then round the Artist's Drive, where the multi-coloured rocks look just like powdered paints splattered on an artist's pallette. This was the most colourful and beautiful sight of the day.

The heat has to get a mention. Death Valley is the hottest place in the world. Today we saw 100degF. That is stifling. When you climb out of the air-conditioned car, the heat hits you like a heavy curtain from which there is no escape.

But the most dramatic was Zabriskie Point, in this picture. Unbelievably, stunningly, breathtakingly, bewildering, shocking. You had to just stand quietly, in awe at what beauty nature can create.