If you guys have been following my Insta, you know that we just started our month-long Airstream adventure!  We originally had just planned to go straight north from San Jose to Vancouver, but crazy storms have been hitting the west coast.  So we did a last minute plan change and headed east instead (which is the awesome part of having your home on wheels and some time).  So our first destination was Death Valley National Park on the eastern edge of California. 

Death Valley was hot, even for October. When we got there it was 100 degrees (though it was forecasted to be in the 80s). Our first stop in Death Valley was Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America.  There's a boardwalk up to the salt flat so that you can literally stand at the lowest point. 

Also during this trip I decided to try to wear as many of the clothes that I review here on this site. So for example I would normally just wear a shirt and shorts while driving around a National Park (it was waaay too hot for hiking) but instead I tried out my favorite items from Everlane and my new favorite backpack from Kara. I got some weird looks from the other tourists but whatever. On the plus side I find that I love my Everlane modern oxfords even more now (they're so comfy!). 

I also loved that Death Valley National Park has a ton of western frontier history. There's an old borax mill and right outside of the park there's a ghost town called Rhyolite. I was thrilled to see an old Union Pacific rail car there (has anyone else binge watched on Hell on Wheels yet?). And speaking of Westerns, I'm also so hooked on West World on HBO right now.  My visit to all these frontier towns couldn't have been more timely. 

From Death Valley we drove to Lone Pine, where a lot of Westerns were filmed back in day (like John Wayne-type Westerns). We spent the night in the Alabama Hills, a free recreation site with a ton of large interesting boulders. At times I felt like I was in Bedrock (from the Flintstones). The best part of this boondocking site was that there was no one for miles around. We had the place to ourselves.  

From there we left the desert and headed up the Sierras!