Death Valley – The Long and Open Road

Kristen Sarah speaks the truth when she said, “There is an unspoken bond you create with the friends you travel with.” I have done a lot of traveling with my friend Alex. We’ve camped, hiked, traversed various deserts, and became stronger friends along the way. We definitely have an unspoken bond.

Planning our Trip to Death Valley

Alex and I were planning a trip to Death Valley National Park. We both lived in Southern California at the time and were going to drive from there to Death Valley. That’s about a five and half hour drive. That isn’t nothing. I have a post about planning for a solo road trip across the country, which was by far my longest road trip. Alex and I have done many day long road trips to various national parks and camping adventures. But this was going to be one of our longer drives.

That means we have to plan for sitting and driving for a long period of time. Less time for walking and stretching, and typically driving snacks are not the healthiest. This is a lot to think about diabetes wise. How many stops should we make? What sort of snacks and drinks should we pack? Is it better to power through and drive as long as possible?

These are all questions I had to think about and bring up with my friend. She is well aware of my diabetes and knows all of the dangers that come along with it. Since we have done similar drives before it was easy to decide on what to do with this drive.

Making the Drive

We decided to stop just when we needed gas and a meal. And we packed mostly water and one drink of caffeine (coffee/tea/soda). We didn’t pack too many car snacks, but we did have food for camping in Death Valley.

Thankfully we made it to Death Valley without any complications. No diabetes scares along the way. Phew! We were able to get to the campsite rather quickly because it was in the mountains on the outside of the park and not near the park’s main attractions. We would be doing a lot of driving each day while we were at the park.

The biggest problem with this was not a diabetes one, but a timing one. We would have to get up early to make the drive and leave early to make it back to make dinner each night. This meant a lot of early morning driving and a lot of late-night driving.

Late Night Driving Incident – Rabbit

One night we were driving back, and the sun was going down. We were on a straightaway enjoying the view at sunset. All of a sudden, a rabbit leaps into the road. “AHHHHHHHHH!” scream Alex and I. Usually it isn’t good to scream while driving, but both of us screamed at the same exact time about the same exact thing, so neither of us were mad about it. Our adrenaline was pumping as we looked behind us to check for a body on the road. “Oh thank goodness, I don’t see anything,” I said looking in the rear-view mirror.

After a few minutes we had calmed down and continued on our way back to our campsite. The sun had now set and we were now driving in the dark. Just to be clear, this is still the same drive where we almost hit the rabbit. The drive is long and we went through daylight, sunset, and darkness on that drive.

Late Night Driving Incident – Burro

We had reached the mountain roads, meaning we were getting close to our campsite. We were entering the mountains so there are a lot of hairpin turns and narrow roads. Not ideal road conditions when it’s dark (or when it’s light). We came across one of those blind turns, made that turn and almost ran right into a pack of burros! Thank goodness we were going slowly. We were all stopped in the middle of the road, staring at each other in the light of my headlights, just waiting on what the other one was going to do. Eventually the burros move off the road and we could continue on. For the rest of the ride, I was driving super slowly and couldn’t wait to not be driving anymore. 

Thank goodness nothing bad happened with my diabetes during the drive. That would have definitely been too much to deal with.

The Open Road

“The best part of a road trip isn’t arriving at your destination. It’s all the wild stuff that happens along the way,” said author Emma Chase. I can definitely say that we ran into a lot of wild stuff on our many drives during this trip. Part of the wild driving luckily did not include driving with low blood sugar. You can read more about that here: Death Valley – Playing Around in the Sand.

You never know what’s going to happen and what you’re going to find, but you’ll always come back with stories and memories. Sometimes there are trips a diabetic goes on where things go right and there aren’t many, if any, scares. Sometimes there are trips where you have to go home early for a diabetes reason. But you won’t know what will happen until you try.