Just the name Death Valley is enough to give some people the chills. But this hot, hilly landscape on the edge of the Mojave Desert grows on you.
Other deserts have their own lure but none beckons Americans more emotionally than Death Valley. We agonize with the pioneers who nearly died here 150 years ago and gave the valley its name. And we can still visualize the mule teams that carried borax out of the desert.
 Comprised of more than dessert sand, you will find volcanic rock, white salt flats to colorful mineral enriched mountainsides when you drive through the surreal landscape of Death Valley National Park in Southeastern, Cal. It is the largest national park in the contiguous United States which contains more than 3.3 million acres and it also holds the record for having the lowest point (282 feet below sea level) in the Western hemisphere.
Just ask Dave Heffner, a desert rat who just can't get enough of Death Valley National Park.
"I've been wandering here 40 years and I still haven't seen it all - and I never will," Dave said. The park, after all, covers 5,000 square miles. There are still spots where few humans have set foot.
Dave and his wife, Diane, can tell you about the remote canyons, the steep snowy mountains, the surprising water holes, the fiery sunsets, the starry, starry sky and the enormous solitude that make the area special.
"It gets so quiet you feel you're going to float right off the face of the earth," said Dave, who sports a mustache on his 64-year-old sun-reddened face and wears a hat with two tiny shovels on the front. He's so well known that he's received mail addressed simply: Two Shovels, Death Valley.
 A narrow trail winds through sections of marble-like rock mixed with mosaic patches of multicolored rock through the Mosaic Canyon near Stovepipe Wells located in Death Valley National Park in California.
The national park is a place where contrast is common - where the sun turns canyons into kaleidoscopes of color and shadow every day. There were two feet of snow in the mountains the first day Dave entered the valley. The next day, it was 94 out on the sand dunes.
You can find a clothing optional spot in Saline Valley and you can attend a free Thanksgiving dinner at the Panamint Springs Resort.
"They come out of the woodwork for that one," said Jim Reinert, manager of a Death Valley campground.
Then there were those 20-mule teams that hauled borax to the town of Mojave. A century ago, an advertising wiz paraded mule teams through cities and towns across the nation to promote Boraxo Soap. Later, the crack of the mule driver's whip and the creek of the wagon wheels were weekly staples on Death Valley Days radio and television programs.
Desert rat Dave was among the millions of people who listened to the radio programs.
"I had to imagine what Death Valley looked like. I thought it was flat, with sand dunes," he said, with a chuckle.
 The Mesquite Flats Dunes glow at sunset at the north end of Death Valley National Park in California. Surrounded by mountains on all sides, these 150-foot dunes are make of tiny grains of Quartz and Feldspar. The primary source of sand happens through erosion from the near by Cottonwood Mountains.
A lot of people have misconceptions about Death Valley. I imagined a place so vast that people died trying to cross it. But it's actually a long, narrow valley between mountain ranges - a small part of the national park. Crossing the valley isn't hard; I walked it in a few hours. But once you're in, there's no easy way out. It's a Venus fly trap.
In 1849, a party of about 300 people left Salt Lake City in their quest for California gold. One of them had a map that showed a short cut through Nevada and California. Well, there are lots of mountains and deserts between Salt Lake and southern California. When the 49ers crossed the Funeral Mountains into the valley they were exhausted and their supplies were nearly gone. Across the valley were even higher mountains that seemed to stretch north and south forever, like a fortress wall. The 49ers could look for a way to cross the mountains or head down the valley.
The group split up. One party went south trying to walk around the mountains. They would have died in the desert, but two young men went ahead and brought back provisions just in time.
The other party wandered through the desert searching for a place to cross the mountains.
Out of food, they slaughtered their cattle and burned their wagons to cook the meat.
Eventually, they found a passage and as they crossed the mountains, one woman looked back and said: Goodbye to the Valley of Death.
The name stuck.
In 1949 enthusiasts planned a 100th anniversary celebration of that first unfortunate pilgrimage.
Unless you're really, really old-- even older than me - you probably don't know a thing about the celebration. But it was the Woodstock of that generation.
Organizers expected maybe 15,000 visitors. But the crowd kept growing. Police closed the roads, but more than 100,000 people made it into the valley.
The get-together was so popular that participants returned the next year. And people been coming back ever since.
Every year around Memorial Day hundreds of modern-day 49ers from all over the world gather here to celebrate - well to celebrate lots of things from the first 1849ers to the 1949ers - but mostly to celebrate Death Valley itself.
I wonder what those first pioneers would think of that.
SKY'S THE LIMIT
Mojave, California, has just one main street, with stores on the east side and railroad tracks on the west. There are more railroad tracks east of the stores and still more tracks cutting in from the north. Mojave was, and is, a transportation hub.
If you walked down the main street 100 years ago, you might see long teams of mules or horses hauling huge wagons of borax from the desert to the train station.
Today, Mojave is the home of the Civilian Aerospace Test Center, which attracts air buffs, test pilots and engineers from around the world.
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"It's the only nonmilitary space pilot testing center in the world that I know of," said Bill Deaver, president of the town council and editor of the weekly newspaper.
 A plane from Edwards Air Force Base in Palmdale, CA fly's over a flag which has been dedicated in the memory of B.J. MacWhorter a local airplane lover. B.J. always had an inside tip on what plane would be coming or going and onlookers would rely on his tips to view the various aircraft from the area know as Aerospace corner.
The airfield was a flight testing and training site during World War II and the Korean War. But when military projects faded, the town recruited private companies, some of them contractors at nearby Edwards Air Force Base, who wanted to do their own testing.
Now little Mojave is a Mecca for all sorts of aircraft.
"If you like planes, this is heaven," Bill said. "You can look up in the sky and see just about anything."
A Stealth bomber occasionally buzzes the airport and military cargo planes sometimes land and go. SpaceShipOne, the first private manned mission to space, was developed and launched here. Voyager, the first plane to fly around the world without refueling, was built here.
You can sit in the Voyager Restaurant next to the tarmac and watch test planes taking off and landing. You can hear the control tower chatter from speakers at your table. There's a good chance you'll be sitting near pilots from countries that don't have their own programs to train test pilots.
On the airfield, you might see privately owned Russian MIGs, vintage World War II or even World War I planes. Last week, two British Tiger Moth WWII training planes flew into the airfield.
Before that, a Russian AN124, one of the world's largest cargo planes, stopped by.
And you see dozens of jumbo jets parked all over the airfield. This is one of the places the major airlines store their unneeded planes.
"You can tell the health of the airline industry by how many planes we have here," Bill said.
About 25 miles down the road, you might get a closer look at Stealth bombers and fighters in Lancaster, where the Stealths were built and where they return for maintenance.
Just off the Sierra Highway (which was once Route 6) people gather almost daily in a vacant lot in Lancaster to watch the military planes come and go at Plant 42, where the Air Force does it's own special projects. The Space Shuttle was built here. B. J. McWorten turned Plant 42 plane spotting into an art form in the late 1980s, said Bill Warford, a columnist for the Antelope Valley News in nearby Palmdale.
"He'd spend his days out there and when there was something special going on he'd tell his friends. There'd be 150 people out there watching," Bill said. Even today, when you see large crowds in the lot you know something's in the works at Plant 42.
B.J. died a few years ago, but plane spotters still gather in the vacant lot - right next to the flag planted there in B. J. memory.
A DANGEROUS ROAD
California Highway Patrol officers from the Lone Pine CQ barracks patrol Route 395 for speeders and drunk drivers every day. On their time off, they come back and patrol a stretch of the road for litter.
They adopted that area in memory of Paul Pino, a fellow officer who was killed on the job in December. He had stopped a semi and was sitting in his car when an SUV rammed the back of his car pushing it under the truck.
 Crosses were placed along the roadside of Highway 395 just south of Olancha, CA in memory of Lone Pine California Police Officer Paul H. Pino who died in a highway accident. His fellow troopers pick up trash as they adopted that stretch of highway for the states highway clean up program.
Police charged the driver with manslaughter and driving under the influence. She reportedly told police she might have been traveling 90 miles and hour.
There are candles, a teddy bear, three American flags, and police jacket near the white wooden cross where Paul died.
I've seen dozens of these roadside memorials on my journey across the nation, but nowhere more than on routes 395 and 14 in California.
Locals will tell you that a lot of it has to do with skiers rushing up from LA for a weekend on the slopes. I don't know whether that's true. But the markers say this is a road where drivers should be extra cautious - that means sober and slow.
If Travis and I do a book on our journey, there will be a chapter on the roadside memorials. Some of them are heart wrenching - many of the crosses are for teen-agers.
Just a few miles down the road from Paul Pino's marker is a thick white cross with Margaret Mary Hart's name on it. There are sunflowers, roses in a case, candles and a picture of Margaret with sparkling blue eyes, brown hair and a slight smile.
"This spot marks Margaret's doorway into heaven," a sign on the cross says.
But she left behind some very sad people, including a niece who wrote this poem:
How am I supposed to live without you,
Your time here was not done.
You were the one I would go and talk to
My life has just begun.
My heart aches because you're not here
And never will be again.
But at least you felt no pain
The day before, I saw you
I didn't say goodbye
The night I would be without you
All I can do is cry.
I know this is God's plan
I just can't understand
I know he took you home
I do not know why
How can I be without you
How can I say
Goodbye
--- Danielle Edwards
Drive carefully during the holidays, folks.
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