Death Valley Days



 Death Valley as seen from Dante's View at 5,475 ft.
Low point on valley floor is 282 ft. below sea level

We’ve been through Las Vegas twice in the last 5 days and we only stopped once, but not to gamble.  We needed a few supplies from REI.  There are no slot machines in REI, although they are most everywhere else you can possibly imagine.  All of Nevada is like that, I guess.  We stayed in Pahrump, NV for a few days just east of Death Valley and there were slot machines next to the RV park.
 

Badwater Basin, the lowest point in Death Valley

 

After a few days of driving to Death Valley from Pahrump, we moved to the campground at Furnace Creek Ranch.  The weather has not been too hot yet, but even so down in the valley the temperatures were in the 90s.  We wanted to make sure we could get a site with electricity so we could run the air conditioner.  90 degrees can warm up our little RV well into the 100’s.  And that is not pleasant.




Twenty Mule Team Canyon

20-mule team wagon at Harmony Borax Works
These wagons could weigh 36 tons or more
 

Besides Death Valley being the hottest, driest and lowest national park, it is huge!  At 3.4 million acres it is the largest national park in the contiguous United States -- only Alaska has bigger ones.  We spent the better part of 4 days touring the park and did not see it all.  We lost one day of sightseeing   because of a severe sand storm.  All one night and day we had to take shelter in our RV.  The RV shook, Maya shook, the electricity went out and the heat went up, but we made it through.  It was a little taste of how the ‘old-timers’ had to do it.  Now David can add a new category to his stats, a “Sand Day.”



Sand dunes with a hint of a storm in the background



Here comes the sand storm!



Sand rolls across Death Valley

I was prepared that Death Valley would be hot and that the desert scenery would be spectacular.  But I wasn’t prepared for the magnificence – it was almost overwhelming.  The park also has a lot of history with borax and gold mining, ghost towns and eccentric characters plus it is the ancestral homeland of the Timbisha Shoshone Indians.




Emigrant Canyon was full of blooming wildflowers

Mojave aster

 

We did a lot of driving in this big park, made many stops for photos and we walked some short nature trails.  We couldn’t take Maya on the trails and most of the time I wouldn’t have wanted her out in the heat.  She is a mostly black dog and if I thought the desert floor felt hotter than it actually was, it would really have been hot for her with all that fur.

Zabriskie Point - a good photo op
 



My turn!

Maya and David are ready for the forest.  They aren’t quite the desert rats that I am.  And we are all ready for some cooler weather and long hikes.  So tomorrow we will be like the member of that ill-fated 49er wagon party that gave the park its name.  As the man left the valley he turned and said, “Goodbye Death Valley,” and so will we.

David's Stats:
Days Hiked     4

Sand Days      1
Total Miles Hiked  5.60    
Ave. Miles per Day    1.40
Total Elevation Gain     215 
Ave. Elevation Gain per day 54   




View from Artists Palette