Death Valley Roadtrip

Ah, the road to Trona. Trona isn't a scenic town, by any means. It's on the edge of a dry lake bed, which is mined for various chemicals. The town itself is completely dominated by the chemical processing plant, and only two plants seem to grow in the salty soils of the town: tamarisk and a few oleanders.

Just south of Trona are some old tufa towers; these form the Pinnacles National Natural Monument of somesuch. You can see them in one of the Star Trek movies; I think it was the campfire scene from Star Trek 5. But I digress. Here we saw a few flowers; not much, but some were hard to find. The small daisy below is about as big as your pinky fingernail... I guess that's one strategy to survive: just do the minimum work to spit out a flower, then die in the heat. This flower below is just about the size of the main plant; imagine if your sexual organs were the size of your main body. Get the point?

Next: we start seeing flowers in the Panamint Valley.