I left Lone Pine at about half-past six. Fairly early, although I would have liked to have been earlier. I had filled all my water-bottles, walked across the road and bought a whole bag of ice, checked the oil and water in my car, and put on my lightest linen-cotton blend shirt. It was still pleasantly cool, and the sun wasn’t yet up. The Sierras were purple in the dawn light. There was very little traffic on the road. I followed Highway 395 south for a few miles, then turned off left onto Highway 136, following the sign for Death Valley.

Death Valley is a kind-of extreme name. Not many people actually die there. Even in pioneer times, most people made it across, and an Indian tribe, the Timbisha, actually lived there. People still live there today, in the towns of Furnace Creek and Stovepipe Wells. And it is, after all, a National Park.

Still, it’s a harsh place. The hottest, lowest and driest part of North America. Large parts of it are below sea level, down to a maximum of 86 metres (282 feet) at Badwater Basin. At the same time, it’s bordered on both sides by high mountains ranges, the Sierra Nevada to the west and the Inyo Range to the east. This puts it in a deep rain shadow, stopping much from growing there, and also stopping the hot air from getting out. On July 10, 1913, Furnace Creek recorded a temperature 56.7 degrees Celsius (134 degrees Fahrenheit), the highest anywhere in the Americas and only a little over a degree below the world record set by Al-Azizyah, Libya in the Sahara Desert. And throughout the summer months, daytime highs climb well into the 40s, and lows frequently stay above 30 degrees as well.

So it’s hot there. And I was driving through it in the summer in a car with no air conditioning. Some people had warned me against it. Still, it was the quickest way to Las Vegas from Yosemite, and besides, I wanted to see it. And in summer, too – no point in doing anything by half. I just decided to leave early and make the crossing before it got too hot.

It was still fairly cool when I reached the ‘Welcome to Death Valley’ sign and got out of the car to take a picture, and the sun wasn’t yet visible over the mountains to the east. But I still hadn’t dropped much below 4,000 feet – the countryside so far had been flat. Nonetheless, I was well and truly in the desert now. As I drove away from the foothills of the Sierras, the trees finally gave up and I was in a land of rolling red and yellow hills and sandy flats covered in sagebrush. The countryside had become very barren very quickly. It wasn’t like the badlands I had seen in Alberta, as there was no sign of water erosion. It seemed hard to believe that water ever came to this desolate place in any form. I was also more or less alone – I saw no more than three other cars in the first hour, which was a record for me in California so far.

When the first rays of the sun did hit, I could already feel the air warming up. I could tell it was going to get hot. And shortly afterwards, the road began to descend, winding down steep slopes and around pillars of wind-scoured rock. At this point, I got stuck behind a van with a Norwegian flag on the back doing about thirty miles an hour. I couldn’t overtake it with all the switchbacks, and after about a quarter of an hour began to get worried. Didn’t he realise we were both going to be in Death Valley at midnight at this rate?

Suddenly at the bottom the road went from being serpentine to being perfectly straight, and I was able to overtake him. I had passed a thousand feet sign, so I wasn’t much above sea level. I drove over one last line of rocky hills, and then there it was stretched out before me.

I could see the Inyo Mountains, still dark against the bright morning sky. And below them, an almost featureless yellow-white plain. Not that wide, although it was hard to make out scale in this landscape. I could just make out the road, and a small town: Stovepipe Wells. The road dropped sharply once more, and I was in Death Valley itself.

It had a few surprises. I passed a resort. A resort? It appears that people actually pay to come here for days, although most accommodation in the park does most of its business in cooler months of the year. Particularly in the spring, when the wildflowers are out. Still, it seemed typically Californian to me. They have this remote, desolate place, miles from any cities, which is virtually uninhabitable for part of the year. So they build a resort there. It seems that half of the Golden State is full of people and cars and cities, and the rest is full of tourists.

What really did blow me away were the tents. I passed at least two. People had actually come here to camp. I suppose, though, in a state of thirty-seven million people, there’s a good chance at least two would want to Camp in Death Valley.

I passed through Stovepipe Wells. I could have gassed up there, but I was doing well and it wasn’t far to Furnace Creek. Shortly after that I passed a Sea Level sign, and the road continued to drop down. The valley floor was generally flat, gravelly and dusty with the odd stunted bush, but there were sand dunes, salt pans and rocky mesas. The desert has some interesting variety in its scenery at times.

A little before Furnace Creek I stopped and got out to take some pictures. The air felt hot and heavy, even though it was only about nine in the morning and the sun wasn’t yet strong. Maybe the feeling of pressure was an illusion, but I was almost two hundred feet below sea level. It’s one of those ironies that Mount Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48 states, overlooks the lowest, only about 122 km (76 miles) away. Temperature-wise, it felt like it was in the thirties and climbing fast.

I stopped for gas in Furnace Creek. I was thinking of getting some breakfast, but I couldn't find anything in the town beyond the gas station, the famous golf course (the lowest in the world, at 214 feet below sea level), and some houses. It would have been interesting to talk to some of the town's residents and find out exactly why they live there, but I could feel the heat building. I drove on, eating the rest of my food as I went.

The traffic actually picked up as I went on, and some of the vista points had a lot of visitors. California is a crowded state.

Suddenly, before I knew it, I'd passed the Leaving Death Valley sign. It was still hot, but now that I was climbing my elevation gain was cancelling out the rising sun. I went through Death Valley Junction, only a slightly larger town than Furnace Creek, and hit the town’s eponymous intersection with Highway 127. I hadn’t decided yet whether to go north or south, but then I saw a sign pointing east. ‘State Line Road – Fastest Way to Las Vegas’. I followed it.