Friday 5/25/18
I don’t recall where exactly we stayed that night – some random hotel between Yosemite & Death Valley. I do recall a late-night stop at a McDonald’s on the way out of Yosemite for coffee and to use their WiFi to find a hotel. We had a late flight out of Las Vegas (10:30) so we had a pretty full day available.
Our last stop on the journey was Death Valley, the lowest, hottest, possibly most hellish places I the world. Given that description, we didn’t plan on doing any super huge hikes, mostly just a drive through to hit a few of the points of interest. We drove in the west entrance to the park and progressed east with a diversion to go south as far as Badwater Basin in the middle. I think this allowed us to see most all the aspects that the park had to offer.
We started with the dunes, which are much different (shorter and more wind driven) than dunes in Michigan. It was 97F when we hit the visitor center, so we loitered there a bit in the AC before heading down to Badwater Basin, the lowest point in the US. There’s a fun little placard on the cliff side above pointing out where sea-level is and a lot of salt.
On the way back we stopped off at Artists’ Drive to see the colors from minerals other than salt. We took a quick hike there, fighting the wind – I’m aware that the salt flats are known for the wind, but this was pretty impressive.
Our second stop on the way back north was to chance the off-road drive out to Devils’ Golf Course to see the salt boulders. Maybe I should have been more concerned about this – there were lots of warnings about tire damage due to heat and sharp rocks, but I figured it was a moderately traveled dirt road, so we just took it slow and made the trip fine.
Our last stop was at Zabriskie Point looking back over the valley on our way out before heading toward Vegas. There was some trail from Artists Drive to Zabriskie Point that we could have hiked, about 4 miles round trip, the heat had sucked some of our motivation out so we skipped that.
We got to the outskirts of Vegas just before sunset and stopped for some dinner and to do some final organization before the flight then drove into the city for our departure.
Devil's Golf Course
The Visitor Center was air conditioned, so it was not 97F inside.
Stovepipe Wells where we stopped on the way into the park for refreshments.
Zabriskie Point panorama
Zabriskie Point
Maybe those are the galaxy shorts... I don't know who names these things.
This is just after leaving Artists' Drive heading back North (I think it was North)
Artists' Drive
Artists' Drive
Artists' Drive - we hiked up a little bit, it was really windy
The Malibu (and Janet) in Devil's Golf Course
I was wondering what these were, so I took a picture. I'm not sure what's in that pipe, but they're expansion hoops so that when the pipe expands in the heat it doesn't buckle.
The road out to Devil's Golf Course - not recommended, but we took our chances.
Devil's Golf Course
Badwater Basin
Salt
Salt
Sea Level
From the parking lot - the sea level sign is up there - about a quarter of the way down the picture in the middle.
Borax Wagon with water tank
I'm supposing that with very little water, the dead trees have and will be there for a long time.
Different use of the word dune than Michigan.
Death Valley Sand Dunes
