My new favorite place

I think Keough Hot Springs Campground is my new favorite place.  We're staying overnight in a mobile home here. It's shady and we have LOTS of room and a full kitchen and a sitting porch and OUR OWN LAUNDRY ROOM and oh yeah, hot pools!  It's like a funky old family resort with a big warm pool and a snack bar with polish dogs and ice cream drumsticks and lifeguards with pool noodles and EVERYTHING!

A decent afternoon following a long morning. We dragged our asses out of bed around four a.m., planning to get out to Death Valley's Zabriski Point to see the sunrise. Death Valley is impressive, but should probably be seen BEFORE the Bisti Badlands.  We watched the sunrise and took hopeful photos - you know how hard it is to capture a sunrise, or how big a sky is.

Headed out across the valley by six o'clock, watching the temperature rise (John's car gives outside temp on the dash panel.)  Got up to 108, and then we began the climb out the other side of the Valley. I sent my daughter a photo of 106 degrees at 6:30 a.m.!

I had on the itinerary to visit Topaz, where I thought the Japanese American internment camp was, tomorrow - but it turns out to be the wrong Topaz (that one is in Utah.)  However, I DIDN'T know we were driving right by Manzanar Camp, so we went in there and toured it.  Not a happy and fun excursion, but you know, you sort of have to do it - maybe especially now. Racial profiling, suspension of civil  liberties, loyalty oaths...

Then we drove on into Bishop and found the Hot Springs where our reservation is, and we're going to spend the afternoon in the pool* and the evening...I dunno yet. Maybe go into Bishop to get some dinner. Maybe just sit here on the porch and watch the rabbits and the birds.

* We swam and soaked for quite a while - then they cleared the pool because there had been a lightning strike near.  We were going to go back in a half hour, but this porch is so nice and the temperature is perfect...