Death Valley National Park, California March 10-13, 2021
We entered from the south....after passing through the town of Shoshone.
Death Valley was full of incredibly unusual beauty!
Death Valley is the hottest place on Earth with a recorded temperature of 134 degrees F
on July 10, 1913.
Over 3 million acres of federally designated wilderness
The first sightings of salt basin.
We thought this looked like frozen ice at first....but it was actually salt.
Badwater Basin is the lowest elevation in North America. (-282 feet)
We climbed up the hillside into a small canyon to see the view back across the salt flat.
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Badwater means salty tasting.
Death Valley is the driest United States national park.
We enjoyed driving through Artist Drive.
The different colored rocks resembled an "Artist's Pallett", one of the noted areas on Artist Drive.
We hiked up to the Artist's Pallett....it was very windy!
Traveling within the park encompassed going at least 50 miles or more in different directions. There were no short jaunts to any place in this park.
That evening we stayed at Furnace Creek campground.
Our second day in the park we went to Dante's View. (5475 ft.)
The views were stunning!
We hiked on Dante's Ridge, a path that headed north along the ridge of the mountain. The views were desert eye candy.
It was quite cold up among the clouds.
Groups appearing on the next ridge were encouraging for us to continue our hike.
We also enjoyed hiking out to the southern point of Dante's Ridge.
Aren't those clouds fluffy!
Larry and I had always wanted to visit Death Valley National Park. We were intrigued by so many rock formations.
We hiked up to Zabriskie Point, an area of past borax mining.
We spent another night at Furnace Creek campground.
The next morning we loaded up the van and headed toward Stovepipe Wells, our destination for the next two nights.
On the way to Stovepipe Wells we climbed the sand dunes of Mesquite Flats.
Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes
From the dunes we spotted the snow capped mountains.
On our third day we rode the scooter up to Ubehebe Crater in the northern part of the park.
More snow capped mountains...yes, it was windy and cold!
Many snow covered mountain tops were spotted along the way.
Ubehebe Crater was about a half mile across. The wind was blowing so hard when arrived that we grabbed a couple of shots and headed back down the mountain.
We were disappointed that Scotty's Castle was closed due to the flood that occurred in 2015.
On our fourth day in Death Valley we rode the Vespa up to Wildrose (9064 ft.) and
Thorndike (9133 ft).....brrrrrrrrr. IT WAS COLD UP THERE due to the high elevation!
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What a great road....full of twists and turns!!!!
The road to Thorndike was gorgeous.
Abandoned outpost from back when the military was training up here.
We rode on past Panamint Springs to Father Crowley's Viewpoint of Rainbow Valley where the Navy and Airforce have been practicing flying jets into low level maneuvers for many years.
Rainbow Valley
We could hear the jets flying overhead, but never spotted a one.
Snow capped mountains were easy to spot back toward Death Valley National Park.
The roads out west just stretch straight as an arrow for miles and miles with roads having speed limits of 80 mph in many areas.
Leaving Death Valley we traveled through Beatty, an old mining town on the east side of DVNP..
Next stop.....Zion National Park in Utah.
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