Travels in a Tin Can

cliff face, illustrated this point. We walked out for about a mile on to the basin
floor and spent ages marvelling at the structures formed by the salt crystals.
We had the place to ourselves, as most visitors were not venturing so far out.
This enabled me to conduct scientific studies to ascertain if the white stuff
present on the ground was indeed salt. It was, and my tongue took a while to
recover!
Other hikes took us up canyons to see natural rock bridges, and out to
a massive non-volcanic crater, Ubehebe. By driving around we were able to
see a lot more, including Artist's Palette - an area of rock face stained different
colours by various natural chemical reactions. The scenery varied quite a lot
from place to place, but by the end of the day it did feel a bit 'samey'.
Nevertheless, more time to spend going on longer hikes would have been
very welcome. For example, one can go from the valley floor to a nearby
mountain if you have time (and energy) for a two-day expedition.
The saddest sight we saw was Mushroom Rock, a natural formation
shaped, unsurprisingly, like a mushroom. We had heard about it at the ranger
talk and the initial photograph we were shown looked very impressive.
Unfortunately the rock has fallen victim to tourism and, during the last century,
a group of scouts broke it by sitting on it. They were not the first group to
clamber up and sit on the rock, generations before them had paused there
too, and this regular use was, I suppose, part of the reason it finally broke. As
often happens the real losers in this tale were not the tourists, but the local
Native Americans for whom Mushroom Rock was a spiritual space. As with
people hiring hammers to chip off souvenirs at Stonehenge this story belongs
to an earlier, less aware, time.