Desert Walking

Yesterday I did a virtuous four mile walk with my family along a canyon and through the badlands along a dry gulch in Death Valley. We climbed around 500 feet and descended the same during the course of the walk which took around three hours. It was quite cool when we started out, but we were all very hot by the end. I particularly enjoyed – not – scrambling down a dry waterfall. Otherwise the walk was on rough ground: the crumbled mudstone that had fallen from the walls of the canyon and the pebbles that had been brought down the mountain by the gulch during the rainy season.

Later in the day we went for an hour’s walk across the sand dunes near Stovepipe Wells. This also had a fair bit of up and down and, while it wasn’t much of a distance – no more than a mile and a half – it was reasonably hard work walking along on soft sand.

This was the first significant exercise I’ve had since last Thursday.

This morning we spent a couple of hours walking three miles up and back down the Mosaic Canyon, which was loose gravel underfoot, plus some rock scrambling.

On the food front, the picture is mixed. Hubby is torturing me by bringing out crisps to eat by the fire every evening. I am, naturally, succumbing to them, matching him crisp for crisp. Meals have been fairly modest. The only restaurant meals we’ve eaten so far were the ones previously reported, in Gilroy and Bakersfield. I prepared a few meals before we left home, so yesterday was chili and rice, Tuesday was pasta Bolognese. Lunch is typically a sandwich (for speed), though yesterday we had a leisurely lunch involving sausages, bacon and fried egg. Not exactly a low calorie meal, but when you’re camping you have to eat what you’ve got. Notice I packed bacon and egg and not tofu and edamame beans.