Death Valley is located in Eastern California in the northern most part of the Mojave Desert and just south of the border of the Great Basin Desert. During the summer, it is know as one of the hottest places in the world, as hot as those deserts in Africa and the Middle East. Furnace Creek holds the record for the highest recorded air temperature in the world at 56.7 degrees C. (134 degrees F.) on July 10, 1913.

The lowest elevation in North America is located in Death Valley at Badwater Basin, at 282 feet (86 meters) below sea level. Interesting, the highest point in the contiguous forty-eight states is just 86 miles (136.2 km) from here to the west-northwest. This high point is Mount Whitney at 14,505 feet (4421 meters.) The highest elevation in Death Valley is Telescope Peak in the Panamint Mountains at 11,043 feet (3366 meters.)

The valley has an area of 3000 square miles (7800 sq km), runs from north to south and is enclosed by mountains on all sides. These ranges are the Amargosa Mountains on the east, the Panamint Mountains on the west, the Grapevine Mountains on the north and the Owlshead Mountains on the south. The valley is a long, narrow basin, most of which below sea level and has high, steep mountain ranges which form walls all around it.

Death Valley has long extremely hot summers, short mild winters and very little rainfall.

According to the wise men of this world, during the Late Pleistocene Epoch, some twelve thousand years ago, and what the wise men of this world call the last ice age, Death Valley was the low point of a system of once interconnected lakes, all now located in the state of California. This lake system includes, first Mono Lake at the highest elevation, then Adobe Lake, Owens Lake, China Lake, Searles Lake, Panamint Lake, and Manly Lake which is now the Death Valley basin.

Manly Lake, the end-basin in the chain of the above lakes was 100 miles (160 km) long, 600 feet (180 meters) deep and this lake is the basin that is now the location of the modern day Death Valley.

However, what those Wise Men fail to recognize is that prior to the Noahacian flood, which occurred less than 4,400 years ago, there were no ice ages because the earth had a canopy of thick clouds that cause a greenhouse effect earth wide.

Not long after Noah, his family and the animals disembarked from the arc, God gave the command for all the people to migrate across the surface of the earth.

The first to migrate across Beringia, was Joktan, who was one of the grandsons of Shelah, who was a grandson of Seth. Then during 2200 BCE, about 170 years after the flood, Joktan who at the age of 68 years, left Mesopotamia with his sons, traveled northeast across the Asian continent crossed the land bridge and unbeknownst to them at the time, entered a new continent and began to search for a new homeland. At the time of their arrival onto the North America continent, this new land was much different than it has become today.

One difference that stands out is that Manly Lake which once filled the Death Valley basin, was in fact a lot larger than purported to be. When Joktan and his sons arrived in the area, this lake was possibly as large as 300,000 square miles in area, covering large areas of the modern day states of Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Utah. This lake was called by Joktan and his sons Schawaneu Menuppek (Great South Lake), and later, when the Uto-Aztecan people, specifically the Fremont and Anasazi indigenous people arrived at this lake, they came to call it by the name of Atezcatl Cahuilla. Even later still, when the Athabascan arrived on the locattion, the size of this body of water had decreased and already become salty, so they named it Tooh ashih-hi, or Salt Lake.

After leaving Turtle Creek campground near Lone Pine, California in the Owens Valley, I travel southeast on SH 136, connect to SH 190 and continue southeast. Then I begin my crossing of the Panamint Mountains

These mountains are desert mountains but since I make this crossing during the month of December, there is some green seen amidst the brown and gray.

After coming down from the western mountain range, I descend to the valley floor and watch as the roadside signs show the decrease in the elevation.

It is a strange feeling to think that this was once the bottom of what is now called Manly lake and here where it is at sea level was more than three hundred feet to the surface of that lake.

At sea level, I see sand dunes to the north and stop to take photos. Also, I turn to look south and it seems that there is a lake at the bottom of this valley.

Soon, I arrive at the Borax Works where the twenty mule team wagons originated. After purchasing the site in 1882, W. T. Coleman of San Francisco built the Harmony Borax Works, hired J. W. Perry as superintendent and commissioned him to design and build wagons, then to develop a route to transport the ore to Mojave, 165 miles to the railroad there.

Continuing along the Death Valley highway the elevation continues to descend. Upon arriving at Furnace Creek, I see another elevation sign and must needs stop to take a photo.

After stopping at Furnace Creek Inn and finding it closed for the winter, I continue east on SR 190, cross into Nevada and continue south of Las Vegas to Boulder City and to my next stop, Hoover Dam.