Death Valley Places

In this second segment about my recent trip to Death Valley National Park I want to talk about some of the iconic places within the park that my daughter and I visited.  Many sites I had considered ahead of time with the help of friends who had been there before.  Others were serendipitous.

One such unexpected outing occurred the first morning before dawn.  Halley and I wandered a couple miles east of Stovepipe Wells to the Sand Dunes.  We didn’t know that so many people would already be there before us.  Silly of us not to expect that.  Still we managed to find a parking place and drudge out into the sand.

We returned to town for breakfast before heading out again.  This time we were going toward Furnace Creek and the Badwater Road.  One of our main destinations was the Salt Flats.  Frankly once again I was ill-prepared.  I had no idea how large the salt flat was or even what consistency.  I mean how many salt flats have I encountered in my life?  Well this first experience was absolutely awesome.

The salt is caused by the water in the river evaporating.  That’s about all the geology you’re going to get from me.  It isn’t my field; better ask my daughter.  The saltpan is about five miles across and you can walk it if you choose to.  We walked the half mile to the edge.  Frankly that too was confusing.  How can you tell where the edge is?  Young and old wanted to give it a try.  By the way, the elevation at the salt flat is 282 feet below sea level.

We wandered to many places along the Badwater Road but in the afternoon we headed back up to Furnace Creek and took Highway 190 toward Zabriskie Point.  There’s a large parking lot and a nice little paved trail up to the viewing area.

After that we continued toward our final destination of the day, Dante’s View.  This meant climbing back up 5000 feet or more into the Black Mountains but the road was easy, even if we were behind a slow moving vehicle.  We weren’t in a hurry.  The park newspaper called this “the most breathtaking viewpoint in the park.”

And of course as Star Wars fans we were thinking Tatooine.  We had no trouble imagining Mos Eisley in the distance.