I’m in Death Valley (at the Panamint Springs Resort) tonight and tomorrow night.

Let’s just say that driving here was intense – I must have gone through several gallons of water and a gallon of Gatorade. Today’s high here was 125 according to the park report.

Even outside the park, it was incredibly hot. At the point where the Path 65 DC transmission line crosses Highway 58, there was so much sag in the line from the heat that it looked like it was only about 50 feet above the road. Given that this line carries 3.1 gigawatts at 500KV, that’s pretty close.

The folks at Panamint Springs are still nice and friendly, as they were when they got the place just before I came through with the Atom in 2006 (before that, the place was run by seriously grumpy people).

Unfortunately, between 2006 and now they gave away The World’s Laziest Cat. I’m sure the cat likes it wherever it is now – it has to be cooler than here. Here’s a picture of TWLC from 2006:

I’ll probably just hang out at the resort and do a few runs in the Atom tomorrow – it is too hot for extended drives (I’ll leave at night when it is cooler).

This entry was posted on Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 9:34 pm and is filed under The Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.