Mosaic Canyon (Thurs. Feb 18)

Little Starlet had a bit of a problem in the night with her bladder. When we came in at 10:30pm, we discovered she was a bit damp and had made a puddle on the floor. I suspect she had dreamed that she had reached the toilet. Hubby and I undressed her, dried her, re-dressed her, and turned over her duvet without waking her up. I think the poor lamb was a bit exhausted. (Deep Thought didn't wake up either, and she is usually a light sleeper; but we weren't holding her legs up by the ankles.) Anyway, no real harm done, and Little Starlet took it all in her stride. We dried everything out in the sun this morning while we were out at Mosaic Canyon.

This canyon is just west of Stovepipe Wells. To get there, you drive down a two mile long gravel road: Shades of the drive into Butte Lake campground last year, but not so intense. Everything rattled a lot, and we had to stop twice to stop things sliding off Deep Thought's bunk, but we survived. Hubby just loves those drives.

Mosaic Canyon is so called because the walls are, at least at first, made of conglomerate with large chunks of marble. It's very appealing, with a sort of tortoise shell pattern. As the canyon continues, it gets single-file narrow, and you have to clamber up smooth marble shutes (which you later have to slide down on your bottom, much to the entertainment of the kids). The walls are very smooth indeed. Deep Thought wondered why all the marble had not been extracted, but we guessed that it had too many gractures in it to be usable.

After the narrows, the canyon opens out into a valley, quite broad, and easy to see how the water rushes down it in a flash flood. In fact it was quite plain to see how much force the water would acquire as it moves from the plain to the narrow canyon. It must be quite a torrent; and thus the smoothness of the marble canyon walls.

The walk ends at a dry fall which I had no intention of clambering down, though apparently if you do the canyon continues for another half a mile. All told, it was a three mile round trip, not as challenging as yesterday, but pleasant and quite different from Golden Canyon. Hubby took about 200 photos of rocks.

This afternoon we are heading over to Badwater, which is the lowest place in the USA (about 282 feet below sea level).