Today we took the 6:30 am early morning boat tour with guide Rudy. We are hoping to see quite a bit of wildlife.

We arrived in Belize at 1:30pm after starting our day at 4am. It took an hour to get out to Bird’s Eye View at Crooked Tree Wildlife Preserve. Our driver was one of the bird guides, so he pointed out numerous birds on the way. We didn’t stop for photos.

Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge actually contains a small part of Death Valley National Park. Ash Meadows is a couple hour drive east of Furnace Creek, so it’s on the way home for us. The rangers at Death Valley started working to save the pupfish at Devil’s Hole in 1952.

Today is a more lazy day in Death Valley National Park. We’ve been doing really well at seeing what’s open in the park, so there isn’t that much left to see.

We started the day driving up to Dante’s View which is the highest point in the park.

We will spend three more nights in Death Valley National Park before heading home.

We spent a day and a half in Joshua Tree National Park before heading to Death Valley. Donna has visited briefly many years ago.

We spent a day and a half in Joshua Tree National Park before heading to Death Valley. Donna has visited briefly many years ago, but Steve has never been there. It was a bit less expensive at Death Valley to delay our arrival a couple days and put Joshua Tree first.

We had some issues getting to Venice. There had been weather delays in Newark, NJ for the past several days. The flight from Kansas City to Newark had been canceled the previous two days. We got on the plane, but after they closed the door but before the plane pushed back, the pilot announced a three-hour delay due to approaching thunderstorms in Newark. We all got off and waited.

We got up at 6 am. I took my shower, Donna took hers last night. I am still coughing up green stuff. We made it to the train platform and got some pastries. The train was late getting in, it left 15 minutes late. It’s supposed to rain in Berlin today, we’ve had four nice days. It rained while we were on the train.