Death Valley

Bill and I had a great trip to Death Valley National Park this last weekend (Feb 5 & 6) It was a lot of fun. We were there for Bill to run his 1st Marathon. We drove down Friday and the run was Saturday morning.


Just a random weird thing to see while driving. Had to put this in there.


Gorgeous mountains covered in snow. As we got closer to Death Valley it all was gone of course. Death Valley is one of the driest and hottest places and receives less that 2" of rainfall a year and I think we got it all over the weekend!

Bill drove the whole way there. We left at around 6:15 and took our kids over to Leah and Jesse's house for Friday and Saturday and Leah took the kids over to Mom and Dad's for Saturday to Sunday because we knew we were going to get home very late. We have such a great family. Thanks you guys for all of your help!!

Friday night we relaxed and enjoyed the peace and quiet!!


Early Saturday (about 6 am) we drove over to Badwater the lowest spot in North America over 282 feet below sea level.

Pretty Artist Palette. We stopped here on the way back from Badwater. You can't really see it that well but the rocks have a lot of different colors purple and green really stand out.

Bill got his number 452. He is standing in front of the restaurants. We ate dinner at the 49 cafe which was soooo good. Bill got his carbs he ate pasta primavera. I splurged and got an awesome fried chicken dinner with mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy, corn, coleslaw and rolls it was super good.

Getting ready to start the race. Everyone was so cold. Bill had to change into his long sleeved shirt. A lot of people were wearing plastic garbage bags to keep warm.

And they're off!! And no that isn't Bill in the very back.

He's coming in.

Crossing the finish line and receiving his medal. I was so proud of him. He has trained so hard for this and he finally accomplished this goal of his. He has run over a 1000 miles in training. He is very dedicated and motivated and just amazing. I love you!!

The results were 4:30:50

Having some punch. Most of his recover was done in the car on the way home.

At the sand dunes after the run.

Some pretty rainbows we saw on the way home. The drive was terrible. It rained horribly most of the time. Here we enjoyed a little break in the weather. We had several moments of when the windshield wipers were on full blast and it still wasn't good enough. We avoided going the 80 or 50 route so we wouldn't have trouble with the snow and needing to chain up and stuff. We went down 99. On the way back the freeway was closed in this podunk town called Tehapachi it is before you get to 99 on 58 near 202 due to some flooding. All the traffic was moved off the freeway with no where to go. We stopped at Taco Bell cause we had to eat anyways and called Gayle to see if there was another way home she helped us out with that but we decided against going because the route took us to the grapevine which is scary on a clear sunny day. We also met up with this lady who lived in Elk Grove and we were looking on her laptop to check on road conditions and routes. We had to move over to McDonald's for their internet service and found some other stranded folks. After about a hour the road was open again and we were all on our way. It was kind of adventurous. We made it home safely around midnight and took showers and went to bed and got up the next morning at 8 to go to Grace Stever's blessing. It was nice to sleep in a little since Mom and Dad had the kids. We made it on time!!