Click on any image to enlarge it!

The images in this post were all taken along the road between Death Valley and Highway 138.  In fact, three of the four were taken with the window down as the car was moving along at 70 MPH (or better and, no, I wasn't driving)!  

This was taken as we were climbing up the western side of this valley.  You can see a set of sand dunes on the left side of the image in the middle ground:

I love the range of colors in this image ... yellow, green, grays, and tan colors n the foreground with the dark grays, purples in the background topped off by the blues in the sky:

Just a bit further and we came to the southern end of Owens Dry Lake.  The incorporated City of Los Angeles (not the surrounding metropolitan area) gets most of its water from the Eastern Side of the Sierras (the mountain range to the left in the image below) and for most of the 20th Century they did not allow any water to run into Owens Lake.  With the blowing winds from the mountains, it became an ecological hazard and the area had the claim of having one the worst polluted air in the U.S.A.  A certain amount of water is now diverted into the dry lake to keep  the  dust down.  This is the one shot where we stopped the car to take pictures:

As we came to the intersection with Highway 138, I spotted this "little" niche in the Sierras and snapped the last image in this post:

From here we turned south to Los Angeles ... another 200 miles away!  

This is fascinating country to me ... it has almost everything: apline territory, dessert lowlands, Brisstle Cone pines, the oldest trees on Earth, etc.  It is really a must if you are ever in California.

Adam