Death Valley - Frequently Asked Questions

Introduction

It’s widely known that Death Valley, in California, is the third most popular vacation spot in the world (the first two being Disneyland and Paris, in that order).  What’s not always appreciated is how much misinformation there is about this tourist mecca, such as the first sentence of this very post.  Read on for answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Death Valley, based on my recent vacation there.

Q.  What is the WiFi password at Death Valley?

A.  This is, by far, the most frequently asked question.  The answer is, there generally isn’t one.  Certain businesses in Stovepipe Wells and Furnace Creek have WiFi, but most of the time you’ll be driving around enjoying nature, and you won’t even have cell phone coverage.  This is a great place to get away from the Internet, if you think your kids can handle it. Don’t forget your old-school road atlas, if you normally depend on GPS.

Q.  How many people died in Death Valley, to give it its name?

A.  One.  This was in 1849, when some miners got stuck there.  Probably more people have died since.  I think I remember hearing about somebody trying to smuggle a corpse through there but was caught, due to the corpse stinking in the heat.  Actually, now that I think about it, that was something that happened on Amtrak.

Q.  Is Death Valley really the hottest place on Earth?

A.  Yes!  For awhile it was thought that El Azizia, Libya had that honor, but in 2012, according to this article, it was determined that “the observer [there] broke a more reliable instrument and used a complicated and less reliable type of thermometer.”  Details are hazy but I think the observer used a rectal thermometer.  (You’re supposed to subtract a couple degrees with those.)  In any event, when we visited recently, the temperature was pretty much perfect.

Q.  Is Death Valley really the driest place on Earth?

A.  No, it’s not even in the top ten.  The driest place is in Antarctica, and the driest non-polar place is the Atacama Desert in Chile.  But Death Valley is the driest place in North America, which is all anybody actually cares about.  The rainiest month in Death Valley is March, when they get about a third of an inch of rain (roughly the same amount the Bay Area has been getting every day this year, I think).

Q.  Would the below catastrophe ever happen in Death Valley?

A.  You mean this?

No, never.  I snapped the above photo in Berkeley’s Tilden Park recently.  I managed to abandon the bike before it [would have] tipped me over (or I’d have probably drowned in the mud).  If you’re sick of wet weather, Death Valley is a great vacation spot.

Q.  Is Death Valley really the lowest place on Earth?

A.  No, but its lowest point, Badwater Basin, is the lowest place in the western hemisphere. 

Look at the cordoned-off area just behind us in that photo.  That’s a salt pan, which is basically salt shaped by wind into these sharp, sharp formations that are between 1,000 and 9,000 feet deep.  The largest salt pan in Death Valley is called the Devil’s Golf Course, and while I agree it would be terrible to golf there, it would be even worse to mountain bike on it.  Imagine if you crashed!

Q.  Is Death Valley too hot to be an enjoyable vacation spot?

A.  If you enjoy sitting in an air-conditioned RV, you could visit Death Valley at any time of year and enjoy yourself.  That said, it’s hard to imagine wanting to hike when it’s 136 degrees out.  One of the trailheads we saw had a sign warning not to go there after 10 a.m.  (One of my surly teenagers tried to use this to get out of the hike.  Nice try ... it was only about 85 degrees that day.)

Q.  That bit about the rectal thermometer?  You have that exactly backwards.  What gives?

A.  Yeah, I know.  Try not to over-think it.

Q.  I have a print of that iconic Ansel Adams photo of Death Valley sand dunes.  Are the dunes as impressive in person?

A.  Definitely!  In fact, as good a photographer as Adams was, it’s impossible to fully appreciate the Death Valley dunes just by looking at the photos.  At least, that’s what I have been telling myself, so I can feel better about these more humble shots:

Q.  What is a haboob?

A.  A haboob is a violent sandstorm.  I don’t know if the winds we experienced in Death Valley count, but anyway it’s fun to say “haboob.”  Right after our hike in the dunes the wind picked up and we wondered if it would strip the paint off our car.  As usual, the following photos don’t do it justice.

That’s the Devil’s Golf Course in the background of the second photo, by the way.

Q.  Was Mad Max – Fury Road filmed in Death Valley?

A.  No, it wasn’t, but we wondered the same thing.  There’s a deep canyon we hiked through to see this natural arch, which looked like where the movie took place.  I can just imagine where they crashed the truck to block the pursuers.  In fact, this area was so reminiscent of the film, one of my kids sprayed silver paint all over her mouth and yelled, “I am awaited in Valhalla!”  (Full disclosure:  my kids haven’t actually seen the movie.)

Q.  Are the flowers as amazing as everybody says?

A.  I think most of the year you won’t see much.  April there is known to be amazing, and maybe it was ... but it wasn’t exactly what I’d expected.  Since it’s been such a wet winter and our timing seemed perfect, I somehow had visions of being totally surrounded by flowers, like in “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (you know, “cellophane flowers of yellow and green towering over your head,” etc.) but it’s not like that.  You mostly see sand and rocks.  But if you stop and look a little closer, there are all kinds of flowering things.  Look at this little dude popping up out of the stones and gravel.

And you wanna see a cactus in full bloom?  Feast your eyes on this!

This is a pretty weird plant, arguably in bloom as well:

These flowers aren’t that colorful but just look at the dead-looking plant that has produced them:

What the hell is this thing?  (That’s not a FAQ ... I’m asking you.)

This flowering plant is notable not just for growing straight out of gravel, but for being so damn small it’s like, why even bother?

I’m not sure what counts as a flower but these little puffballs are just darling.

Q.  I’m not a giant flower fan.  What else is worth looking at?

A.  There are lots of cool rocks.  Quartz, amethyst, and so forth, and also some big varicolored boulders.  Volcanic minerals (including hematite and chlorite), rich in iron, aluminum, magnesium, and titanium (but oddly no copper) provide a lot of color.  Check it:

The mountains are pretty, especially in the evening:

The roads are pretty dramatic.  Artist’s Drive twists around and has lots of ups and downs that leave your stomach behind ... it would be really fun to drive that on a Kawasaki Ninja at top speed, if you were an idiot with a death wish.  Here’s the road leading to where we stayed at Panamint Springs:

You’ll also get to see Joshua trees.  Gobs of them, forests even, and burnt ones.

Q.  Is there good stargazing?

A.  I guess for really good stargazing you’d need a new moon.  Our visit happened to coincide with a full moon.  That said, we were able to take a nice night walk before the moon rose and saw more stars than usual.  There still seemed to be a fair bit of light pollution … maybe that was the unrisen moon?  Who knows.  (What am I, an astronomer?!)

Q.  Is Death Valley a good place for Beck’sting?

A.  Heck, anyplace that allows beer is good for Beck’sting!  If you camp, you’ll just need to replenish the ice in your cooler regularly.  Also, you’ll have to settle for delayed Beck’sts since you won’t have cellular connectivity.  Here’s one of my Beck’sts from the trip.

Q.  Is there good wildlife viewing in Death Valley?

A.  I’ll start with the bad news:  we didn’t see any road runners.  That was a big letdown because the so-called resort where we stayed (canvas tent on a concrete slab) had a road runner as their logo.

That said, we did see some pretty groovy creatures.  I’ll start with the sphinx moth, which has such a giant body, and such lightning fast wings, that at first we thought they were hummingbirds.  To realize they were giant insects gave us an uncanny feeling.  Unfortunately, they fly way too briskly and erratically for me to photograph … believe me, I tried.  Click here for some great photos etc.

Then there were these birds that made an incredible screeching one morning.  Part of the point here is the amazing zoom on my camera, which proves that non-phone pocket cameras are not yet obsolete.

So what are those black birds with the yellow heads?  Why, they’re yellow-headed blackbirds!  The ones with no yellow are either females or regular blackbirds (what am I, an ornithologist?!), and I think the dark brown one is a juvenile.

Okay, on to something more exciting.  This coyote was just moseying along near the road.  We weren’t as close as it looks (again, the long zoom helped out), but we couldn’t get over how tame he seemed.

At first it was exciting to get such a good look, but then it was kind of sad.  This creature was probably the coyote equivalent of a panhandler.

Okay, now on to the most exciting wildlife of all.  I’m talking about creatures less than two inches long from tip to tail.  These are the famous pupfish of Death Valley.  We were lucky to get to see them, because in the hotter months (most of the year, I think) they dig themselves under the mud so they don’t become a giant species-wide fish fry.  I know someone who spent a month in Death Valley and never got to see the pupfish.

The great thing about these fish is that they only live a year, and much of that is underground, so during their active phase they really don’t have time for anything but fighting and sex.  Here are a couple of schematics that capture the entirety of the pupfish non-subterranean existence.

Unfortunately for the pupfish, the sex isn’t exactly amazing. The male kind of sidles up to the female, and they wriggle along together while he spews his seed everywhere. My older daughter Alexa (who is at least as knowledgeable as the Amazon Echo, particularly where science is concerned) estimates that the shallow streams of Death Valley where these pupfish congregate is at least 20% sperm. Paternity must be really difficult to establish.

Given the apparent lack of seduction, can we consider this rampant intercourse consensual?  My kids wondered about that, since at times it appeared the female was attempting to get away.  It’s hard to tell, though, because these fish are in such a damn hurry all the time, they never sit still anyway.  My wife concluded that it’s probably consensual given their short lifespan.  “It’s not like the female has time to pursue a Ph.D.,” she declared.

Here is my best snapshot of this endangered species.

And here, in living color, are videos of the two primary pupfish activities:

Q.  Any tips about the best route to and from Death Valley?

A.  Assuming you’re a Californian (because nobody really lives in Nevada, right?), the prettiest route to Death Valley would be through Yosemite.  But wait, not so fast!  If you’re visiting Death Valley in the spring, before it becomes a fricking oven, the roads through Yosemite probably won’t be open.  I think they’re usually closed until May or June.  (Who wants to drive in snow during spring break anyway?  Not me—I learned that lesson the hard way.)

So, if you’re going in the spring, you’ll need to head south to go around the Sierra Nevada mountains, and cut over at Bakersfield (slogan:  “Nice place to live, but I wouldn’t want to visit”).  Now, if you’re navigating via GPS, Google Maps will direct you down Highway 58 thru Mojave and then have you take Highway 14 north.  This is not very scenic, and sends you through the little Searles Valley community of Trona, which Wikipedia says is “known for its isolation and desolation.”  The main employer is a chemical plant processing soda ash.  The Los Angeles Times describes Trona as “blight on an industrial scale.”  Its singular claim to fame is that it has the only high school football field made entirely of dirt.  Sure, you’re through Trona in under ten minutes, but it’s pretty harrowing.  The houses are all falling to ruin, the majority having been abandoned.  My kids begged my wife and me to take a different route going home.  Ever the provocateur, I said, "Actually, I’m hoping they’ll have cheap gas there.”  My wife flatly refused:  “We are not stopping in Trona.”

As we learned on the trip home, there’s a much better route that only adds about 20 minutes to your drive.  Here’s how we did our return trip (and you could obviously reverse this for the trip out):

• Head west on Highway 190, with a jackknife turn at the dried-up Owens Lake (worth looking at in and of itself)
• Make a left on Highway 395 and head south a right fur piece
• Head west on Highway 178, which will take you over Walker Pass and past Isabella Lake—neither of them all that scenic, but a pretty nice drive
• There’s a very good diner, Nelda’s, in the little town of Lake Isabella
• The stretch of Highway 178 to Bakersfield winds through a gorgeous gorge, which justifies the extra 20 minutes of driving all by itself

Q.  Is there Internet connectivity in Trona?

A.  Probably.

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Why Train Travel Is Better

NOTE:  This post is rated PG-13 for mild strong language and subtle insinuations of mild sensuality.

Introduction

 Six years ago I blogged (here, here, and here) about my family’s trip on Amtrak from the Bay Area to Chicago.  Well, we’re at it again.  I’m typing away from the observation car as the train makes its way through the mountains east of Grand Junction, Colorado.  Our destination this time is Denver.

(As far as you know I posted this after the fact and/or we’re flying straight home from there so by the time you read this it will be too late to burglarize our home.  Or maybe not … maybe this is the beginning of a long vacation, in which case you’re welcome to try to steal our sentimentally valuable but commercially useless family heirlooms, though you’ll have to deal with our psychotic gun-nut house-sitter and his meth-fueled pit bull, who never knew his father.)

Having tackled the overall train travel experience in my previous posts, today I’m going to give you the top 10 reasons why train travel is the best way to go. 

Reason #1:  Train travel is novel

Train travel is novel.  Flying has become as routine as taking a bus, more so actually, as has driving, and both activities get old pretty quickly (unless you’re driving on a cool highway like US 50).  And on the train if you get tired of your coach seat or sleeper car berth, you can mosey on up to the observation deck, or down to the lounge, and at mealtime you get to sit in the dining car (and actually, the Amtrak food is pretty darn good).  At bedtime if you’re in a sleeper you fold down one bed from above and turn the seats into another bed, which is really fun for kids (I think this gave my younger daughter goose bumps the first time).

The train stops from time to time, in places more rustic and less bland than the convenience stores along an interstate.  You can step off the train for a little fresh air.

Reason #2:  Flashers

Also, if you take the California Zephyr route you’ll cruise along the Truckee and Colorado rivers, where there are lots of rafters, and your chances of being mooned or flashed are very high.  It’s a long-standing tradition, apparently, for young men to moon the train, or young women to pull up their shirts or bikini tops for the benefit of Amtrak sightseers.  When my brother took his kids on this train back in ’05 they were flashed by rafters, as was my wife in ’06 (while my head was, alas, turned the wrong way).  And while I was sitting here peering into my laptop just now, a rafter flashed the passengers to my right.  I’m so bummed to have missed that.  Serves me right for writing this instead of just gazing out the window and watching life go by.  I hope you’re happy.

Reason #3:  Better for the planet

Wikipedia reckons that “a train seems to be on average 20 times more efficient than automobile for transportation of passengers, if we consider energy spent per passenger-km.”  They base this on an assumption of the car getting 39 mpg, which is far better than most cars get, especially with a bunch of luggage and/or bikes fastened to the roof rack.  In contrast, Wikipedia estimates that a passenger train gets 468 passenger-miles per gallon of fuel.

I’m not sure how Wikipedia gets their “20 times more efficient” figure because they don’t show their work.  My Volvo gets about 28 mpg on the highway, so with 4 passengers that’s 28*4 = 112 passenger-miles per gallon, which—compared to the train’s 468 passenger-miles/gallon—makes the train look only 4.2 times as efficient as a fully-loaded automobile.  I’m not going to ponder this disparity at length, because I’m more interested in comparing a train to a plane.

Wikipedia estimates that an Airbus 380 (the dumpy plane most of us tend to fly) gets 78 passenger-miles per gallon.  That means the train is 6 times more efficient (per passenger) than the plane. On top of that, the plane is polluting up in the atmosphere where the emissions do the most damage.  The so-called “climatic forcing” effect of jet aircraft means that although “per passenger a typical economy-class New York to Los Angeles round trip produces about 715 kg (1,574 lb) of CO2,” this is “equivalent to 1,917 kg (4,230 lb) of CO2.”  That is, the fact of the aircraft emissions being high in the atmosphere increases the environmental damage by a factor of 2.7.  So the train is actually about 16 times less bad for the environment than a plane.  In other words, for the environmental cost of one family vacation involving air travel, we could take 16 train trips of equal length.

If these numbers start to make your head swim or your eyes glaze over, here’s a more interesting way to express the efficiency of trains:  in 2007 a man dragged a 7-coach train weighing almost 300 tons along its track for more than 9 feet, using his teeth.  This is possible because the steel-on-steel interface between the train wheels and the track incurs so little friction.  (You think that guy could lift even a small single-engine aircraft off the ground with his teeth?)

A final environmental consideration:  the benefit of your choice doesn’t end with your train trip.  Amtrak pays freight train companies for the use of their tracks, so by supporting Amtrak you’re also supporting the railroad freight industry, which is far greener than long haul trucking.

Reason #4:  Can be cheaper

If you can tolerate coach class—where the seats are way bigger than an airplane’s, by the way, with far more legroom—Amtrak can be very inexpensive.  I’m sharing a table in this observation car with an lady who is traveling from Winnemucca, NV to some town just outside Chicago for under $280, round-trip.  The gal across the aisle is going from the Bay Area to Denver and the total tab, one-way, is $222 … which covers herself and her two kids.  (Full disclosure:  this was her original cost, but a couple days before her trip, Amtrak ran a special on the sleeper car so she upgraded for “not much money.”)

The sleeper car is generally a lot more expensive than coach, but I sprung for the sleeper car because this is our big vacation for the year.  It was worth paying extra just to be able to tell my kids, “We’re livin’ large as possible, posse unstoppable, style topical, vividly optical.”  I can’t make this boast with air travel because first class there is way too much money to even consider, and the seats are still smaller than even the coach seats on Amtrak.  (Each seat in the sleeper cabin is wide enough for two.)

Reason #5:  None of the airline bullshit!

I hate flying.  Going through the security check, and having to take off my shoes (even though the one guy who tried to smuggle explosives in his shoe got caught), and having to drink up or forfeit my water, and let some guy pat me down so closely I expect him to ask for my phone number afterward, and then having to take my bag over to some table where somebody runs a little cloth swab all over it to check for explosives—as if!—and then, once I’m finally on the plane, being deprived of legroom, food, even peanuts, and invariably being seated right above the wing with the jet engine shrieking in my ear, and having the baggage policy get ever stingier practically every time I fly, and being asked to pay—get this—$150 each way to bring my 17-pound bicycle on the plane … it’s all just such bullshit I can’t even describe it without the “-shit” part.  I tried to use “BS” but it just wasn’t enough.

On Amtrak, there is no security check.  None.  I mean, what are you going to do, hijack the train and make them take you to the Flagstaff, AZ station instead of Denver?  The Amtrak process is so simple:  you make your reservation, print out your single sheet of paper which serves as the boarding pass for your whole family, show up at the station 45 minutes in advance (no check-in required), and bring practically as many bags as you want, for free, and take them right to the train where you’ll have access to them the whole trip and never have to wait for them to come off the carousel.

And you know what?  If you’re not that organized, and you get a late start riding bikes to the station with your teenage daughter, and if Google Maps totally screws you by leading you not to the station but to a barren place across the tracks and more importantly across a giant fence from the station, so you have to spend an extra ten minutes racing around on surface streets, you can literally roll up with your bike less than 15 minutes before the train leaves.  At least, my daughter and I did, and incurred only a very mild, brief tongue-lashing at the ticket counter, where I paid $10 each to take our bikes on the train.  And the bikes, un-boxed (because Amtrak had run out of boxes), didn’t have to go through some system of conveyor belts like at an airport, which present some danger to the bikes, which danger the airlines—being dicks about this, like everything—accept no liability for.  I put the bikes on a luggage cart, and the conductor said they’d just be leaned on a wall and lashed down.  Simple.

Reason #6:  Less stressful than driving

Driving is a leading cause of accidental death.  Even if you’re the best driver ever, you’re sharing the road with drunks, and irresponsible young men who think driving fast is a game, and drivers who just plain suck.  And you have no control over the weather, which can turn your road trip into a nightmare.

With a train, you’re responsible for  getting yourself to the station and that’s about it.  Then you can read, sleep, look out the window, play a board game, blog, or take advantage of the seventh reason why trains are better.

Reason #7:  Friendly fellow passengers

It is technically possible to have a good conversation on an airplane with a fellow passenger, but highly unlikely.  First of all, your only opportunity is with the person in the next seat, vs. wandering around a train with the opportunity to chat up anybody who seems friendly.  Second, most air travelers are too angry, too tense, and/or (if they’re on business) too preoccupied to want to chat.  In my experience, everybody in the Amtrak observation car is there to soak up the view and relax.  I’ve conversed with several friendly passengers today.

Conversely, if you don’t feel like chatting, you don’t have to be rude to the person in the (assigned airline) seat next to you who keeps asking what you’re reading instead of letting you read.  On a train, you can just return to your seat, or into your sleeper car where you can close the curtain and/or door.

Now, if you’re sharing an automobile with your favorite people, of course you can chat with them, but only to a point.  If you’re the one driving, you shouldn’t get too caught up in the conversation or you’ll become that “distracted driver” that is such a menace to society.  (Once, at the end of a 6-hour drive, I missed the exit to my mom’s town because I was so caught up in reciting the poem “Kill My Landlord.”)  If you’re not driving, you need to take care to not distract the driver too much.  And you can’t have a good conversation with your kids because they’re too busy fighting in the backseat, and dispensing toilet paper out the window to make comets, and fussing, and squirming, and asking, “Are we there yet?”  On the train you can split them up, banish them to their sleeping room, or tell them to go pester the conductor about the ETA.

Reason #8:  Better scenery

The view from the tiny plastic airplane window is okay during takeoff and landing, but once you’re at cruising altitude you’re usually too far up to see much.  Occasionally the pilot will get on the PA and say, “Those of you on the right side of the aircraft can see the Grand Canyon down there … looks a little like a cracked lip.”  Often there’s cloud cover below the plane so you can’t see anything at all.

The view from an automobile is better, but you still don’t see as much.  Train tracks sometimes go through places that don’t have roads.  I’ve been looking out at the Colorado River and the gorge it winds through, and it’s pretty impressive.  The tracks go through less developed areas so the landscape is often especially impressive.

Right now the train is threading its way between Routt National Forest and Arapaho National Forest, near the towns of Kremmling, Heeny, and Sheephorn.  Have you heard of these places?  Of course not, and that’s the point.  (“I used to live in Kremmling,” a friendly fellow passenger just piped up, having perhaps read that over my shoulder.  “One saloon and one cabin.”)

Even familiar scenery can be completely changed by the unique vantage point of the train.  I’ve seen the Carquinez Bridge hundreds of times, but never from below, as I did yesterday.

There are even volunteer docents on some stretches, who will give you history about an area (such as the gold country or the gorge we’re going through now).  They don’t just drone on either; they’re pretty funny.  “Look at that white thing way up on the bank there—that’s a Suburban,” one just said.  “That’s a teenager’s driving lesson.”

You also get to see cooler animals via the train.  On this trip my family has seen antelope; prairie dogs; some strange animal we’re calling a desert badger; a jackrabbit; mule deer; and even a T-Rex scarfing baby Ewoks like they were croutons.  (I made that last bit up to see if you’re still awake.)  Some animals seem curious about the train whereas no living creature has any interest in cars (except certain humans).

On top of all this, you’re not going that fast on the train, so you get a better look at everything.  (And you still get where you’re going sooner than a car because the train doesn’t stop for the night.)

Reason #9:  Don’t have to look at people

There comes a time during a conventional voyage when you get so bored, you may be unable to resist looking at other people.  How often have you been on a 6-hour flight and you get so stir-crazy you decide to head over to the lavatory, even though you know there’ll be a line, and you stand there looking out over all the other bored, irritated people, packed in like cattle, and you just hate them all?  Or you’re so bored during a drive that you start to look at every driver you pass, and in every single case they’re looking back at you, and you’re both thinking, “What are you lookin’ it?!” and it’s just kind of creepy?

I guess if the answer to those (albeit rhetorical) questions is “No,” then you’re a better person than I am, and you can have your boring interstate highways and jam-packed airplanes.  For me, boredom just isn’t a problem on a train, and there’s so much to look at, and everybody looks better to me because, like them, I’m so much more cheerful.

Reason #10:  No deep vein thrombosis or perforated eardrums

Okay, I’ll concede that deep vein thrombosis isn’t exactly an epidemic.  It’s the rare person who, due to being too cramped and still for too long, suffers a blood clot that moves through his/her system and causes a pulmonary embolism.  But it can happen.  What if you got one and died on a plane or in your car?  Wouldn’t that be a rotten way to go?  (“He died as he lived … stuck in coach” or “He didn’t die alone … his car veered over several lanes and took out a school bus.”)

Meanwhile, train travel is easier on your ears.  The pressure changes on a train are very gradual.  As you cross the Continental Divide, you might notice the foil on a single-serving coffee creamer start to bulge, but you won’t feel much in your ears.  This train is at over 7,000 feet elevation right now and I’ve barely felt a thing.  Airplanes are different.  Cabin pressure is at cruising altitude is equivalent to 5,000 feet of elevation, and can decrease to zero in a matter of minutes when you land.  Once, I had a minor cold resulting in a clogged Eustachian tube, so when the plane descended I suffered a perforated eardrum.  This was absolutely excruciating and turned my ear into a geyser of blood and pus for several days, and required several follow-up visits with a doctor.

Bonus Reason:  Hand-to-hand combat

If you try to give somebody a real beat-down in the aisle of a passenger jet, you’ll probably get arrested when you land.  And an automobile is just too confined a space for a good fistfight—your elbows keep hitting things.  The sleeping cabin of a train, however, is private and spacious.  I could hear my daughters going at it from across the aisle.  They don’t pack a good punch, those girls, so neither was injured, but I think they had a good, satisfying tussle.

This was confirmed when I interviewed my daughters for this post.  Among the reasons my older daughter gave for preferring train travel was “Can finally fight it out with your sister once and for all.”  She even admitted that she was fantasizing a bit about being James Bond, who never boarded a train without having one final battle with this or that nemesis.  (And for the record, upon reading over my shoulder just now, she has assured me that she was pulling her punches and actually could have done serious damage.  Maybe on the way home?)

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