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Entrance to the Eureka Mine. This mine produced over $175,000 in gold over its lifetime. Pete Aguereberry apparently stubbornly refused to leave and mined it his whole life.

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Peeking through the bars into the depths of the Eureka mine

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Checking out the tourists

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The entrance to this bunker (storage?) was not closed off. We peered inside but had forgotten flashlights so we couldn't see very far.

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Need some old cans of paint?

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Just hangin' out in the mine.

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Judging by the grille and the overall shape of the car, we think this is a 1947 or 1948 Buick. Aguereberry died in 1945 so it seems unlikely that this was his car, although it has clearly been here for quite a long time.

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Thinking about buying this car? That's the original grill, and a bit of chrome is still intact.

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Just a few shotgun pellet holes in the side.

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And the car's got an anti-theft system pre-installed. (2 tons of rocks!)

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Giselle's ready to make an offer.

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Aguereberry's camp. We weren't sure whether to be surprised how intact it still is, or be saddened at how much has been destroyed by vandals.

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Looks like a nice icebox.

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Need some drums of dubious contents? We've got 'em.

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Good ventilation

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Our rental truck liked acting all tough on the bumpy roads. It got us everywhere we needed to go and that's all we asked for.

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The view from Aguereberry Point

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Happy to be out of the car.

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Panorama at Aguereberry Point. Click in the center of the image for a larger view.

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These would be daunting roads without air conditioning.

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Getting warmer!

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This is as far below sea level as we're likely to ever be.

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If there were any other american tourists crazy enough to come down here in August, we didn't see them. Everyone else seemed to be german or french.

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See that tiny sign way up on the rocks? (generally above the gap between the two cars, most of the way up the cliff). That's sea level.

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A forbidding environment. We didn't take a very long walk from Badwater.

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For a sense of scale, there's an enormous truck on the left side of the picture. It just looks like a gnat.

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We took a hike to this Natural Bridge. It was really really hot but we stayed in the shade when we could, walking through this narrow canyon.

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We didn't realize that the trail wouldn't wind its way back to the natural bridge so we kept walking down the canyon.

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It was absolutely beautiful but we were getting hotter and hotter.

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We just kept following the trail figuring there'd be something worth seeing at the end.

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We walked under this enormous boulder.

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But in the end the trail dead-ended at a cliff and we had to turn around. We should've read the trail description more thoroughly! At least we brought 2 liters of water, which we drank during the 2 mile walk.

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Back on the road we went past the enormous sand dunes.

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