My husband and I took a 4-day mini-vacation to Death Valley during the time of the new moon, mostly to see stars, and also so we could check another California National Park off our visit list, DV being our third of nine total. We’ve lived here six years already, so at our age we clearly need to step up the pace.

We said goodbye to the ocean less than 30 minutes from our house and headed generally southeast to pick up 101 in Salinas Valley. Cali is a vertically oriented state striped with mountain ranges and valleys, so traveling across it is largely a matter of long drives through flat country followed by maneuvering around ranges, and not being a native, I don’t know many place names. This first part took us through artichoke, strawberry, and Brussels sprout farms, sadly mostly conventional as evidenced by the dust plumes rising behind heavy equipment disturbing depleted soil, with coastal mountains to the right and inland ones to the left.

We passed King City, the extent of my regular traveling range as a volunteer for TMMC, and stopped to eat in the pleasant town center of Paso Robles, also the name of an American Viticultural Center due to being surrounded by 250 vineyards of which we did not visit even one. We did have time to walk through the central plaza which included a somewhat elaborate horseshoes…course? field? lawn?

At this point the terrain was hilly, but a scant hour or so later we started crossing what I believe may have been the southern part of Central Valley, or if not, just south of that. We could have been in the Texas panhandle: very, very flat for a very long time with some dried-out looking farms and rectilinear orchards, a lot of scrub, tumbleweeds, and oil fields large and small. We saw more nodding donkeys than cows. Signs warned of excessive dust in the air; we kept the windows up.

This tiresome section ended in Bakersfield, a sprawling, butt-ugly oil city where we suitably filled our tank for $3.69/gallon, the best price we have seen in years! This was the timewise halfway point of our 7.5 hour, 440-mile journey. We were rejuvenated as we left Bakersfield behind and the scenery immediately improved, with swooping foothills and long vistas, dissipating our loginess. We re-acquainted ourselves with the function of the steering wheel as the endless straight highway to the horizon transfigured into swoops and curves, and we passed semis by the handfuls as the grade steepened.

This was the nicest part of the journey, curving very slowly east and then starting north around the end of mountains, enjoying view after view including a gorgeous sunset amid row upon row of ridgetop windmills. From here to the end, which is to say, most of the second half, we are driving through wilderness with an occasional small town or lonely train track. We noticed this when we went to Yosemite too, hours of wilderness surrounding the approach. It seems a great portion of eastern California is untamed, and happily so unless you are nervous without cell service.

The final two hours were driven in darkness, by which I mean No Lights At All. We were on small, mostly un-numbered roads following the navigator attentively through frequent turns. Various clues indicated the roads were sometimes on flat ground and sometimes near precipices, but we couldn’t see more than the few hundred feet straight ahead illuminated by the high-beams. For a while we drove through a salt mining area, including its associated factory town, and occasionally we saw a gleaming power plant in the distance. Mostly it was darkness on a two-lane road, the only lights being those of the occasion oncoming car, with no sign of human habitation.

When we got to our hotel in the park, we dumped our stuff and headed right out to look at the sky. The gorgeous sunset should have warned us: Cloud cover! We were completely socked in, not a twinkle in sight. Would we achieve our main vacation goal?