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| 03/22/2007 | Thursday 0700, up for breakfast and then off to the Furnace Creek Visitor Center to check on road conditions. We then headed to Saratoga Springs via Death valley junction and Shoshone, this was a long drive taking about 2 hours to get to the Springs. At the springs which consisted of three different large ponds and several smaller ponds, the tulle grass was very tall. There were some large 2" blue pup fish swimming around! The water was very clear with spring water visibly bubbling up from the bottom of the ponds. We saw many birds, there was at lest on very large gray bird with a 5 or 6 foot wingspan, this was probably a Great Blue Heron. There were also several lizards crawling about and we took some nice photos of them. There are some remains of one rock building also at the springs. |
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| We then headed north on the Harry Wade Road, this is a very nice dirt road. We found a spot to sit in the desert and have lunch along this road around noon. At the springs we saw two other vehicles, yet along the Harry Wade Road we never saw even one. |  |
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| After returning to the paved road (Badwater Road) we headed north toward Furnace Creek. We stopped at the Natural Bridge Canyon and hiked up to the bridge with Bryan continuing up the canyon until the dry water fall. We saw good examples of the "wax dripping" down the canyon sides, this is actually dirt left behind when the water evaporates very quickly along the canyon walls leaving trails that look like wax. | ||
| On the way north we stopped at the Devils Golf Course. Bryan had read about a large salt pool opening up in the salt flats a few hundred feet from the parking lot. After about a 5 minute search this pool was located. It was very deep and impressive looking at about 4 feet by 5 feet across. |  |
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Our next stop was Golden Canyon which we also hiked. The late afternoon sun give this canyon a very golden color. We hiked up to Red Cathedral for a total of 2.5 miles hike round trip, this was very worth the hike. We saw some desert holly plants, these had "fruit" on them, the blooms are round leafy looking disks or fruit. Next it was back to camp for dinner and we even had a camp fire as the wind had died down enough. The stars are phenomenal with about a quarter moon showing. |
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