Day trip (sort of) to Death Valley

I have lived in California for four years and have gotten to see so many wonderful things in this amazing state! I feel like I have explored it with the intensity of the philosophy that “I may never be back.” Luckily, I will be living here for at least four more years (and, by marrying a California “lifer” thus far, there is a good chance I may become a “lifer,” too); however, there are still a few things which are lingering on my “must do/must see list.” Death Valley National Park was one of them.

We had a bit of time after our Costa Rica trip (before returning to “real life” in Sac) to spend in the U.S. (having taken K’s advice to not “milk every vacation” for every last day abroad, as I have been guilty of doing in the past. I must say, as a result, it really has been one of the most relaxing vacations I have had, and certainly one of the best that I have had in the past four years).

So my idea of “relaxing” some more was to get up at 4 a.m. to leave Orange County to visit Death Valley National Park, a mere 5 hours away (and about 10 hours from Sacramento). Let’s just say that I think K must really love me because this 4 a.m. wake-up was not the first in the past week of “vacation” (think: early AM flights and bus rides in order to get where we needed to go in C.R.). But waking up at 4 a.m. to go visit a breathtaking national park is far better than getting up at the same hour to, say, preround, right?? We are definitely still vacationing.

Let’s just put it out there that lots of travel is sort of mandatory to see this park, as Death Valley is not close to ANYTHING. Well, anything besides maybe Las Vegas which may be a more popular competing tourist destination (when I asked some So Cal natives, “Have you ever been to Death Valley?”, most of them replied “No, why would we go there? We’ve driven by there on the way to Vegas, though.”) A couple of times on the road, K did ask, “Are you sure you don’t want to go to Vegas instead?” ("No, I'll leave that to you for your Bachelor party," I replied.) Death Valley is across the Mojave Desert from the LA metropolitan area. It is south of Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Yosemite NPs, and Mammoth Lakes, which are similarly quite difficult to get to at times (think Sierra Nevada mountain passes, road closings… and a future blog post for more on that subject...). The park is basically 5000 square miles of desert, and there aren’t many ways in or out.

But we went. And we made good time. WE ARE SO GLAD!!! What a wonderful treasure of a national park! It is the largest national park in the continental U.S., and one of the most unique that I have visited. We had heard that March- April (a great time to visit, as temperatures are reasonable) can be swarming with tourists. However, visiting on a weekday, we were pleasantly surprised by the paucity of visitors (mainly old people on tour buses—likely from Vegas or NV!), which seemed interestingly to parallel the rather desolate environment.

Death Valley is not the most beautiful of national parks I have visited (I'm thinking that Glacier, Yosemite, or Yellowstone are up there at the top). It being pretty much a desert (the area gets the least rainfall of anywhere in the U.S.), there is very little “green” to be seen. There are years when springtime can be blessed with the blooming of wildflowers; however, due to the very small amount of precipitation this year, this was not one of those years. However, the landscape and the variety, as well as the history and extremes, makes this park extremely interesting.

Zabriskie point (thank you to a friendly tourist for taking this photo, one of the only of the two of us)

The name of the park comes supposedly from the spoken farewell of a woman in a group of pioneers who wandered into the valley in the 1849. Few members of the original party survived in the stark environment and, when leaving, the woman uttered, “Good bye, death valley.” In case you didn’t know, Death Valley is the most scorching place within the U.S. in the summer, with temperatures reaching up to 136 degrees Farenheit as you can see from this sign:

Apparently, summer (July-August) is one of the peak times for tourism (I CAN’T IMAGINE WHY, with those temps), as many Europeans venture here to get the recognition for surviving the record heat. Per one of the park rangers, it cools down to a refreshing 110 degrees at night in the summer. [And another factoid: crazy people run the Badwater Ultramarathon in July, where a course takes them 130 miles from Badwater, the lowest point in the continental U.S. (see below), to Mt. Whitney, the highest. I am not sure how many people die trying or how many of their shoes melt in the process.] Currently, the weather is nice-- 50s-80s; however, the blustery winds (up to 35 mph) were quite a surprise for us. The ranger told us that the wind is kind of random—it does not appear to be correlated with specific seasons. Here is the gist of the conversation we had:

Me [brushing sand out of my eyes]: Is it always this windy??!
Ranger: No; it seems to come and go. Sometimes every other day or so it’s like this. It happens due to the storms on the California coast.

Me: Is it this windy in the summer?

Ranger: It can be.

Me: Well, at least the breeze must feel nice when it’s that hot.

Ranger: Not really. It’s like having a blow-dryer on in your face. With sand blowing everywhere.

Me: Oh. Well, I guess it’s good that we are visiting now, then.

The park consists of various natural attractions which are quite widely spaced by desert landscape (we didn’t get a chance to visit “Scotty’s castle,” the opulent home of a famous tale-teller as it would have been an extra two hours' drive); however, the connecting roads are very nice. Here are just snapshots of the highlights:

Dante’s View at 5475 feet

(the hair gives you an idea of how windy it was-- we worried we'd get blown off the mountain!)

Furnace Creek Ranch, with various old country-western equipment (along with a General Store and Saloon)...

...and palm trees!

We drove through twenty-mule canyon-- where wagons of mules carried mined borax to the villages, as well as to a viewpoint called Artists’ Palette—the hills of sand were glorious colors, including reds, browns, greens, purples, and yellows...

Badwater Flats

Badwater is the lowest point in the continental U.S., at -282 feet (282 feet below sea level; land below sea level can only exist in areas where it is extremely dry).

We could see the sign reading “Sea level” high upon a rockface behind us.

What is really cool about this is that the highest point in the continental U.S., Mt. Whitney at 14,497 ft (which Erin, TJ, Brian, and I hiked last September), is a mere 80 miles (as the crow flies) from Badwater. Isn’t California awesome?!

K and I had fun hiking along the salt flat, which reminded me of my excursion to the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia with Mindy in 2009.

Here are the obligatory fun, jumping pictures…

(this was on the first take!)

(not this one, though. Apparently, per Kelvin, I don't "get off the ground" very well)

....and a guy with a hula hoop... (?!)

Devil’s golf course with sand spires

Mesquite Flat sand dunes

I just ADORE sand dunes!

Lone Joshua Tree (Joshua Tree N.P. was another contender for the day trip but lost out to D.V.N.P.)

As I mentioned before, we were originally going to camp overnight at Furnace Creek. I was envious of all the visitors who drove around in their RVs (while K wants a Segway, I badly want a RV so we can travel around in full style without worry about where to stay :)); however, for fear that our tent would blow away due to the gusts, and the fact that (due to our early [!] start) we saw most of the highlights of the park over the course of the daylight hours, we opted to be hard-core and drive back to Sacramento the same day. That is a LOT of miles.

This last part definitely did NOT go according to plan. For details about that part of the adventure, you will have to wait for another post. Stay tuned for that drama….