FOUR BLONDES IN DEATH VALLEY

Published in the March 28, 2026 edition.

In 1850, during the California Gold Rush, a wagon train of pioneers set out for California, hoping to strike it rich. Trying to take a shortcut, they veered off the main trail and became hopelessly lost.

They wandered into the harsh, unfamiliar terrain of Death Valley, facing extreme heat, starvation, and a deadly lack of water. Wagons were abandoned, they killed oxen for food, and the group split into smaller parties in a desperate attempt to survive. 

When one woman finally made it out, she looked back and said, “Goodbye, Death Valley.”

One hundred seventy-six years later, I found myself making the same proclamation.

It started Friday evening. My boyfriend and I, plus another couple, arrived at the park at sundown, drove a couple of miles up a dirt road into a canyon, and set up a dispersed campsite. No one else in sight.

An hour in, hamburgers on the Coleman stove, conversation flowing, we rejoice in our packing skills. Twist-off wine? Genius.

Let’s go over tomorrow’s plan. More wine. How’s work been? Open another beer. How’s so-and-so? Maybe another drink. 

Then, where are the keys? 

Oh no. I think they’re locked in the car.

The same car you were planning to sleep in? 

Yeah. 

Oh, God. 

One bar of service. AAA might come… except they won’t service a dirt road. A tow company could… for $1,100.

Cue alcohol-fueled ingenuity. I found duct tape – luckily, my boyfriend had recently watched a YouTube Short where someone used a ton of duct tape on a window to pull the glass down. We’re on it.

Unfortunately, the duct tape is terrible quality. It snaps the moment we try to pull. On to Plan B.

My boyfriend uses a pocket knife to break the seal on the passenger-side door. I fashioned a tent stake tied to a string (from bundles of The Sheet), reinforcing it with the last of the duct tape we salvaged. Once he’s broken the seal, he wedges a tire iron into the slot of the door and yanks. I try to hook the manual lock with the stake, dangling the end downward. No luck. Reaching the lock feels like playing a claw machine. Stake out.

Enter the tent poles. We bend the stake at an angle, attach more tape, and try again. Twenty minutes of jabbing later, we admit defeat. We can’t pry the door open enough to get proper leverage, even with me perched on the roof holding another wrench while he yanks from the other side.

Then, how could we have missed it? There’s an unlock button. Push. Shove. Pull. The stake is now a hindrance. We smack the contraption against the door, hanging by a thread, hit the button… nothing.

Wait. The unlock button doesn’t work? 

It’s a 2010 Chevy Suburban.

Whatever. We don’t have $1,100 plus tip.  Pocket knife, tire iron, tent pole. Still nothing. Back to the manual lock. Out of duct tape, but I do have a first aid kit. Medical tape? 

Why not. Push, pull, shove, yank. Almost there. Not quite. There it is. 

Huzzah!!! 

Hello, Death Valley.

The next day goes almost without incident. We start at Zabriskie Point, meander through the Artist’s Palette, and gasp at waves of pink, purple, yellow and white wildflowers spilling across the desert floor. We ooh and aah at canyons, sheer rock walls climbing impossibly high, and wilt in the heat. North to Ubehebe Crater we go, marveling at the scale of it all.

“Alright, now we’re done with the touristy stuff. Let’s go to the cool part of the park,” says the same person who locked the keys in the car the night before.

We believe him.

Ten minutes later, we realized our mistake. The dirt road branching from Scotty’s Castle Road near Ubehebe Crater is washed out at the start. My sweet, ten-year-old Honda CRV struggles. The Suburban, by some miracle, powers through at 40 miles per hour while our little car creeps along at ten. Dust swallows us. 

Eventually, they pull over, grinning ear to ear, desert stretching behind them. 

“Just for team vibes, it gets better from here,” they reassure us. 

My boyfriend white-knuckles the wheel, bracing for the ruts. Seventy-five miles to Big Pine. Not better. Not one other car passes. No service.

Finally, we reach the Eureka Dunes. Sunset hits. The dunes are massive, remote, and… totally worth it. Beers in hand, we climb to the top, watch the sun spill into the desert, laugh as the wind sweeps our footprints away. Sliding down, reveling in the freedom, the exhaustion, the sheer ridiculousness of it all, we feel exuberant.

Until 20 minutes after sundown, when a whisper from my rear left tire reminds us that Death Valley isn’t done with us yet. A slow hiss, then a little whine, letting us know we are absolutely, completely screwed.

Back to our resourcefulness. We try to chew gum to squish atop the hole. That doesn’t work. We try tape, to no avail. We ultimately resolve to stop to refill the tire with my portable air compressor every five minutes. For hours. In the interim, my boyfriend is back to white-knuckling the wheel, bracing for every rut, every pebble, every imagined catastrophe. 

Then my check engine light comes on. We can’t even begin to deal with that.

The miles crawl by. I think about the pioneers wandering this same desert, hopeless and desperate, and marvel that they survived. 

Then, finally, in the distance, the warm glow of 395 appears. Relief hits like a tidal wave. I exhale, laugh, cry, and laugh again.

Good bye, Death Valley.