Hot Springs and DEATH... Valley that is.

 We left Anna, Marco and their wicked hospitality with a new mission. Marco had kindly given us the book "Hot Springs and Hot Pools of the Southwest". If any of you know Andrew you know that he loves hot springs and the Whiteswan hot springs near Invermere BC is one of his favorite spots on the planet. So this book was like a godsend to him. Lucky for us, heading south from Reno on the 395 was like hitting the motherlode of hot springs.  The first night we went to Buckeye hotsprings. A tough place to find in the dark, but we managed and spent an incredible night laying in the hot pools beside the river staring at the overwhelmingly clear sky and searching for shooting stars and contemplating how amazing our lives are.

The next day after we went back to Buckeye for a morning soak we headed to the Travertine Hot Springs. A little more effort was put into the creation of the pools and created a stunning effect with the water creating its own 'tufa ridges' made from the mineral 'Travertine'. There were four pools together from one travertine ridge each a slightly different temperatures as well as an upper and lower pool all spread out by 100 meters or so.

The next night we stayed at the "Hot Pool" Hot spring after getting treated to dinner in Mammoth Lakes by Gunther a german we met at Mono Lake. Hot Pool was situated with an amazing view of the sierras and we proceeded to have another amazing night of star gazing and shooting star searching. 

Mono Lake

The following day we had a serious day of Hot Springing. We went to three different hot springs. The last was a hot river that had multiple pools of varying temperatures. 

After we felt we had really made a serious effort and had good success with the hot springs we headed into Death Valley National Park. I think we have managed to hit some of the perfect times for travelling and driving through Death Valley in November was no exception. The weather was plenty hot and the amount of tourists was down significantly from the summer season. We had a great day of checking out canyons, jumping off sand dunes and of course going to the lowest point in North America. It had to be done after staring at Denali just a month and a half ago!