Geo-RoadTrip 2014: Exploring Lone Pine

After leaving Death Valley we headed down the road to Lone Pine, CA.  It's a small town but has a lot of interesting things going on and is a great access point to the Sierra Nevada mountain range including the Alabama Hills and Mount Whitney.  But before tackled the mountains, we made a stop at the Eastern Sierra Interagency Visitor Center.

Inside they have a great interactive, 3-D model of the mountain range:

As well as a section of the Los Angeles Aqueduct that delivers water from around the area to Los Angeles:

Exploring Lone Pine further led us to a monument to a tragic natural disaster.  In 1872 the area was the site of an earthquake estimated to be 7.6 to 8 on the Richter scale killing 27 people and destroying most of the town's structures.  Today a small stone marker commemorates the event in front of the mass grave of the victims:

The plaque on the marker reads:

Next up on the trip: movie memorabilia!

Geo-RoadTrip 2014: Death Valley Part 2

Further down the road brings us to the Furnace Creek Visitor Center.  It offers some interesting exhibits and a nice brake from the heat.  The thermometer outside is a popular photo op.  You can see in the above picture that the temperature was 121 degrees.  (It eventually reached 123 degrees while we were there but we didn't get a picture of that.)

At our previous stop, Zabriskie Point, the mineral Borax was mined for years using 20 mule teams.  Inside the Visitor Center is you can see some in both a processed and natural state:

After we cooled down we headed back outside and further down the road to the Devil's Golf Course.  This oddly specific name refers to a particularly brutal portion of the park:

The rocky rough texture of the ground is due to halite salt crystal formations.  You can make out some hexagonal patterns and a better looks at the salt crystals in these pictures:

There's still more park to discover.  Coming next is even more Death Valley!