Welcome back to school everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Holiday Break and are coming back refreshed and ready to learn! I usually spend time in Florida visiting my parents, brothers, cousins, etc., but this year I hit the road. Overall I got my National Parks passport stamped at 5 different locations! Some of the pictures I took are below!
Surrounded by mountains, no water feeds into Death Valley, and very little rains here.
Spent the night 2 hours SE of Death Valley in Ridgecrest, CA on an empty 326-acre property.
Public art on Route 66 headed to Palm Springs, CA.
Joshua Tree pictured on the right.
The nearly 100-year old Hoover Dam, supplying water to 3 states, is part of the Colorado River Watershed.
The dam will cease to work if the upstream intake towers of Lake Mead fall below 950 feet high. Over the last few years the lake continues to set records for new lows as drought plagues the American southwest.
I took special tour of the inside of the dam. This is from a vent about half way up looking out at Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge.
This is the best dam picture I took, sorry it isn't very good.
Petroglyphs.
These turbines make an excellent source of alternative renewable energy in the desert.
Driving through the desert it started SNOWING on the way to Las Vegas.
My friend Beckie and I are posing for a lineup.
At over 1100 feet tall, the Stratosphere Tower overlooks the Las Vegas "Strip".
After the trip out west I went with some friends to Charleston, South Carolina for the New Year celebration. This Live Oak, nicknamed "Angel", is the oldest living organism east of the Mississippi River at 1500 years!
This is the view from Fort Moultrie, a part of Fort Sumter National Monument, overlooking the channel the British once used to attempt to capture the Port of Charleston.
Look in the foreground... there is a dolphin swimming! Fort Sumter is pictured across the channel.
Fort Moultrie was a big part of both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Throughout the years the artillery was updated to fight in the World Wars, but the fort never saw action.