La Vallée de la Mort

Back in the 1990s when we lived in San Francisco, we went on many camping trips to places including Yosemite National Park, Death Valley, and many places along the California coast. Walt had a Jeep that was a good vehicle for such trips. We slept in a tent. The dog went with us. Here are some photos I took on two different camping trips to Death Valley, in 1999 and again in 2002. (All these photos can be enlarged.)

            These first four photos are general views of driving into and arriving in Death Valley, which is actually 282 feet (86 m) below sea level. In summertime you can't really enjoy going camping there, because the average high temperature on summer days is blistering hot. In the summer of 2001, the temperature hit at least 100ºF on 154 days. The highest temperature ever recorded at Death Valley was 134ºF (59.6ºC) in 1913.

            We only went to Death Valley in April and in October. You also have to be careful going there in wintertime because snowstorms can make traveling over the mountain that surround the valley very hazardous. You can see Walt and his Jeep at a campsite we set up in Death Valley in 2002. Another time we were visited by a roadrunner (in French, un grand géocoucou) and we were watched from afar by a small pack of coyotes, a North American wild dog related to wolves.

            The colorful rock and sand formations in the photos above are part of an area called Painted Canyon. And the last photo in this series shows a restaurant called the Still Life Café, where we had lunch as we were leaving Death Valley. It was operated by two young Berber (Algerian) women who spoke French and made delicious French food. We really enjoyed meeting them and talking with them. I wonder if they are still there. I can't remember if I had read about the café before we went there, or if we just stumbled upon it by accident.

I was surprised to find this photo among the ones I took at Death Valley 20 or more years ago, in light of my post about Daube de veau à la niçoise yesterday. The bucket with NIÇOISE OLIVES printed on it sat on the ground at the front entrance of the Still Life Café (in Olancha, California). You can see it in the last small photo above. The women who operated the restaurant were using imported olives from Nice to dress up the delicious salads they served, I guess.

I just found an article about the Stilll Life Café here. It appears to have relocated to a bigger town, Independence, not far north of Olancha. It was struggling to survive the business downturn caused by the Covid19 pandemic in 2020.