Death Valley National Park

SUN., JAN 1, 2023 thru THUR., JAN 5, 2023

We left Indio, California New Year’s Day with goodbye hugs to the Hannafords and promises to reunite in two months in Galveston. We kept tears to a minimum. It was a 154-mile crappy rainy drive headed northwest to Barstow, California for Gary and I. One bright spot was seeing a rainbow outside Palm Springs over the wind turbines. What a sight! 

Monday, Jan. 2nd, we enjoyed a 170-mile extraordinarily scenic drive north to Furnace Creek Campground in Death Valley National Park. Excited to be here for 4 nights! Death Valley is the largest national park in the contiguous US at almost 3.4 million acres. Wow. It holds many records. It’s the official hottest place on earth with a recorded 134 degree temp. The driest place in the US with less than 2” of rainfall a year. And the lowest place in North America at 282 ft below sea level at Badwater Basin. 

Death Valley National Park… remarkable, awe-inspiring, otherworldly, humbling. Just a few of the adjectives that come to mind to describe this amazing place. On Tuesday, Jan. 3rd, we visited Dante’s View overlooking the Black Mountains. The last quarter mile of the road to the top had a 15% grade! Once at the top the elevation was 5,575 ft, and it was 20 degrees cooler than at the base of the park. It was a chilly 35 degrees at the top. Views were breathtaking, like no other, and brought me to tears. We had a clear view below us of Badwater Basin’s salt flats on the 200-mile valley floor. And across the way we could see Telescope Peak, which is the highest point of the Panamint Range. It’s 20 miles away and at 11,043 ft.

After Dante’s View we visited Badwater Basin. The lowest point in North America at 282 ft below sea level with salt flats as far as the eye can see. Yep, table salt. Badwater Basin got its name because back-in-the-day a surveyor was trying to get his thirsty mule to drink from the water here. The mule was having none of it so the surveyor labeled the spot “bad water” and the name stuck! It’s not bad just very salty. 3,000 years ago this basin was the site of a 30-foot deep lake that evaporated and left a 1-to-5 foot layer of salt in its wake! Amazing! We saw even more salt flats at the “Devil’s Golf Course.” It had crystallized salts forming jagged formations. You were warned to walk carefully because falling could result in painful cuts. 

Our final stop was the 9-mile “Artist’s Drive” with a stop at “Artist’s Palette.” Absolutely gorgeous! A winding, narrow one-way drive with rock formations that looked like they came from an artist’s palette, where sea green, lemon, yellow, periwinkle blue, and salmon pink mineral deposits are splashed across the barren background as if from a painter’s brush. Thus the name! We hiked 4 miles throughout the day and climbed the equivalent of 17 flights of stairs. That’s enough for one day!  

Wed., Jan. 4th, we visited the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes. Awe-inspiring! 150-ft sand dunes surrounded by distant mountains that sprawl across 14-square miles through the widest part of Death Valley. The sand felt fabulous on my bare feet. Although in sections it was hard packed sand that looked like the hide of an elephant… at least an inch thick but underneath was soft sand.

Afterwards we stopped at the remains of Harmony Borax Works. It operated between 1883 to 1888. Borax (salt minerals) was considered the “white gold of the desert” and ranks as the most profitable mineral in the valley. There are over 18,000 open mine shafts on the 3.4 million acres of park property today. 

Operating at capacity, the plant employed 40 men and produced 3 tons of borax daily in a grueling work environment. Miners used 20-mule teams to haul borax 165 miles to the railroad in Mojave. It took 30 days to do a round-trip. No wonder the 20-mule team remained the symbol of the borax industry for over a century on product labels and on television. Mules solved their problem of getting the product to market. 

Then we drove through Mustard Canyon. Aptly named as you’re surrounded on both sides by bright mustard-colored canyon walls. This park never ceases to amaze!

Thursday morning we experienced a rare event in Death Valley… rain with accompanying gusty winds. Not sure if I feel lucky exactly, but we were glad the sun came out in the afternoon. We took the opportunity to drive thru 20-Mule Team Canyon. It was about as wide as a 20-mule team and winding! But once again a striking landscape of multi-colored canyon walls. Afterwards we visited Zabriskie Point to see Death Valley’s vibrantly colored badlands. Stunning! Mr. Zabriskie, for who Zabriskie Point is named, was an executive at the Pacific Coast Borax Co. and in the early 1900s oversaw the switch at Death Valley from mining to tourism.

The morbid name of “Death Valley” was bestowed on this area by latecomers to the 1849 gold rush. Veering south to get around the snow-covered Sierra Nevada some of them stumbled into the desert where they lost animals, wagons, each other, and sometimes their lives. As this ill-fated group was finally led out over the Panamint Mountains by their rescuers, one of the rescued men turned back and said “Goodbye, Death Valley.” The name stuck. 

Tomorrow we leave Death Valley but with a much greater appreciation of this remarkable National Park. It defies description. It has a beauty and landscape completely its own. As with so many places we’ve visited, we’d come back in a heartbeat! 

But tomorrow we move on to a different landscape… Las Vegas! 

A short video of 20-Mule Team Canyon… not to worry, Gary sped up the video. We weren’t actually going that fast. Heehee.