Death Valley is the hottest and driest place in North America and the biggest national park outside Alaska. Its reputation notwithstanding, it offers much beyond cracked mud, cattle skulls, and rattlesnakes. Death Valley holds both the lowest point in North America and terrain over 11,000 feet. It also contains oodles of oddities like stones that move themselves, ghost towns, and a salt pan spread over 200 square miles. Plus, the blankness of its landscape allows for full appreciation of each colorful twist and etch. For us, Death Valley was packed with countless surprises, some of them galactic.
Due to its remote location, reaching Death Valley requires some driving no matter which direction you are coming from. We decided to make this our first road trip with a new car. Unfortunately, the excitement of taking our fresh wheels was tempered by beeps. Our windshield wiper fluid became low somewhere between St. George and Las Vegas. Our car, in all its technological glory, reminded us of this near deficiency precisely every mile. We stopped in Vegas to mollify the Gods of Beep with an offering of washer fluid, but it took three stores to find this common item. What’s up Vegas? The rest of our drive was exquisitely beepless.
Our first day in the park, we covered a tourist requirement by visiting Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level. Many of our fellow visitors just popped out to get a picture by the sign and then hurried on to their next photo stop, missing the best of Badwater. With about half a mile of walking, the distinctive polygon-shaped salt patches that Death Valley is known for can be reached. These are definitely worth taking a couple thousand steps. Why so salty? Death Valley’s salt pan was covered by a lake that evaporated about 2,000 years ago leaving behind its minerals. More deposits have been added with each flash flood. Since Badwater Basin is below sea level, those compounds have nowhere to drain. Voila! A couple thousand years with a clogged pipe and you’ve got a salt crust up to five feet thick.
After North America’s low point, we visited Satan’s fairway. The Devil’s Golf Course is a part of Badwater Basin that doesn’t flood because it’s a few feet higher than the valley’s deepest point. It’s also rarely touched by precipitation. That absence of water has allowed for the formation of large halite crystals over time. These are sharp and unforgiving; I’ve never encountered terrain so eager to stab. We managed to take a little stroll amongst the jagged, pickled sculptures without any bloody bumps.
Just before sunset, we stopped at the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, which is the park’s largest dune. There, you can hike miles along ridges that rise up 150 feet, or you can roll away like R2-D2 did. That’s right, Mesquite Flat was one of the many locations in Death Valley used for filming the Tatooine scenes in Star Wars: A New Hope. Death Valley was also the setting for parts of Return of the Jedi. As nerdy as we are, we somehow didn’t know this before our trip.
The following day, we were off to Zabriskie Point and a 2.7-mile trek through the Badlands Loop. On the Badlands Loop, you wander through the maze of buttery colors below Zabriskie Point. These deposits were once the bottom of Lake Manly. Tilted and distorted by seismic activity and scored by the bursts of countless floods, the Badlands feature a labyrinth of carved, barren mounds separated by the thirsty fingers of dry washes.
We also checked out Natural Bridge in Natural Bridge Canyon that afternoon- yes, those names are amazing. Jason and I have seen many natural bridges, this one was different. With a toothed and chunky span 35 feet tall and equally wide, this formation could never be called graceful. Like almost all the 17 bridges in Death Valley, Natural Bridge is composed of conglomerate rock, which is a type of sedimentary stone containing gravel, pebbles, and boulders. Basically, conglomerate rock is nature’s cement. This short hike, only 0.3 miles each way, is sure to please the geologically curious.
Ever in search of nifty sunset locations, we tried to catch one at Artist’s Palette that evening. We saw roughly the last 30 seconds. Fortunately, the sun’s disappearance didn’t mute the heaps of mint, blush, canary, and ultramarine splashed and swirled by volcanic and hydrothermal activity across this mountainside. Magnificent!
We filled the following day with a trek and a view. First, we hiked the portion of Golden Canyon to the Red Cathedral. You may know Golden Canyon by the name Jason calls it- Jawa Canyon. Most of the Jawa scenes in A New Hope were filmed in this butterscotch-colored gap. Naturally, we reenacted a few.
We successfully caught a sunset that evening at Dante’s View. As it turns out, Dante’s View is also Luke’s view as he is looking down at the Mos Eisley spaceport. This spot, located on the north side of Coffin Peak, is over 5,000 feet above the valley floor. From its vantage point, one can see both the lowest and highest points in the contiguous United States. Yes, in case you are wondering, back in the 1920s, Death Valley’s landowners dove a little heavy-handed into the death theme as a means of encouraging tourism- Dante’s View, Funeral Mountains, Coffin Peak- you get the idea.
As our final exploit in Death Valley, we got up early to catch a sunrise at Zabriskie Point, a popular daybreak photography spot. We’d read that if you didn’t arrive at least an hour beforehand, you wouldn’t be able to procure a spot. Although we were only 30 minutes early, there was still plenty of space amongst the 26 tripods waiting for rays to reach Manly Beacon. We didn’t mind getting a few less snoozes to get this experience.
Death Valley felt like the Wild West meets Mars. It was beautiful in rare and unexpected ways. The diverse landscape appeared alien, and we found spiders in our toilet. The temperatures hit the mid-80s almost every afternoon; it sure didn’t feel like February. How does anyone handle it when it’s 45 degrees warmer? Jason asked me in earnest before we left the park, “Do you promise you’ll come back to Death Valley with me again?” Jason, I promise.