![]() Death Valley National Park is huge. It's actually the largest U.S. National Park south of Alaska. That being said, I had no idea what to tackle first on my short trip to this park. In my experience, Death Valley doesn't have these big ticket landmarks that everybody just knows you have to see, the way Yosemite, Yellowstone, and other nation parks might. Since it was the first park I saw on this trip (we ended up seeing six), I hadn't had the time to do a lot of research. So I want to take you through all the things I got the chance to do during my short time in Death Valley. Golden Canyon Trail: After taking a look out at Zabriskie Point, we stopped in Furnace Creek Visitor Center to read all the trail descriptions and talk to a ranger about what all he recommended we do on our timeline. Our first stop after that was the Golden Canyon trail. My interest in this hike pretty much came solely from the fact that it said "most popular hike in the park" in the trail description. This trail was hot. And I don't mean that in the figurative, Paris Hilton sense of the word. Even though the forecast predicted it would be a little bit cooler in the park that day, it ended up being about 97 degrees. In early April. Heat doesn't bother me too much, so I was fine, but I would definitely recommend doing this trail earlier in the morning than we did. Most of the trail runs between high walls of rock, which kind of intensify the sun. Or at least, that's how it felt. ![]() It was hot enough that half of my group turned back pretty early on to get my little nephew, Emmett, back in the air conditioning. But my mom and I continued on. The rocks were pretty cool, and you could see quite a distance in some places. I'm still not sure we ever made it to the end of the trail. There was never any sign, but we knew the trail was supposed to be three miles round trip (out and back), so when we reached about a mile and a half on my fitness watch, we threw in the towel and headed back. Maybe there was some grand payoff that we would have seen if we had only gone a little bit farther, but if there was, it required a bit too much climbing than we had the energy for. ![]() Salt Creek Interpretive Trail: This trail was beautiful! We were there as the sun was going down, so it wasn't too hot. The whole trail was only a half a mile loop, and it was on this wooden bridge type structure, so we could just stick Emmett in a stroller. It was a lot of beauty for not a lot of work. This grassy creek area seemed so out of place in the otherwise barren area, but it was a cool change of pace. ![]() Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes: We really lucked into a great experience when we made our way to the Sand Dunes. We coincidentally made it there right at sunset, which apparently is a prime time to see it. It was stunning. The shadows that the dunes create at sunset are so beautiful. This site is listed as a two mile hike, but when I arrived there, I saw no such trail. Not that it mattered to me one bit. People were walking and playing everywhere enjoying the view. Some people brought picnics. Some people brought sleds. There were so many people that you'd have to make a bit of a trek into the dunes to manage taking a photo without other people in the background. But by the end of the day, taking photos was really not that important to me. So you get to see all these lovely strangers in my photo! They really are lovely though. There's something about National Park people. They're so happy. There's always a great energy in crowded parts of National Parks. I'll probably touch more on that in my Yosemite post, but the many people at the Sand Dunes were no different. ![]() Mosaic Canyon: We wanted to squeeze in one more excursion before we lost daylight. Even though Mosaic Canyon is a four mile hike, the ranger had told us that you get to see a lot of this trail's beauty at the beginning. He was definitely right. We didn't make it very far into the trail at all, and we saw amazing marble formations with such colorful patterns. It was cool and smooth to touch, which I found out when I pretty much just stood there gawking at the walls. What I Wish I Did:
There was one trail that I was really curious to see, and that was Darwin Falls. The whole concept of a desert waterfall seems so contradictory to me, that I knew I wanted to hike this 2 mile trail. But when I mentioned that to the ranger at the Visitor Center, he was quick to inform me that there's no way to get there without a high clearance vehicle. Don't even try it. Boo! One other thing I wanted to do was see the Racetracks. Apparently, this is where some big rocks mysteriously slide across a otherwise empty desert surface, leaving a trail in the dirt behind them. I wanted to see this for two reasons. Reason 1: how the actual heck? Reason 2: that one episode of Spongebob where they were delivering a pizza and he said the pioneers used to ride these babies for miles. My Spongebob reasoning was not enough to make the two and half hour detour necessary to see this site. Plus, you may have to have a high clearance vehicle for this one too... Death Valley was cool. Definitely not literally, though. But it was only the first park I saw on this trip. Look for my posts on Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Joshua Tree, and Petrified Forest all in the next few weeks!
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About the blog.I started this blog in 2017 with the goal of seeing all the U.S. National Parks and writing about them. But as I kept writing and posting, I realized there's so much more I want to document in my life. So, the blog grew into something much broader and even more special to my heart. Archives.
January 2022
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