Death Valley National Park – March 2022

We decided to make a road trip to Phoenix to see Greg Gutfeld, one of Kim’s favorite TV personalities. Kim had never been to Death Valley, and I’ve not been since I was maybe 9 or 10 years old, so this made for a good stop on the way to Phoenix.  We visited in mid March, and the weather was perfect, never getting above 82 for the three days we were there.

On the way there we drove by Lake Isabella. The lake level is so low you can see the tops of the trees from when the reservoir was first filled!

We stayed at the Inn at Furnace Creek, a historic hotel that dates back to 1927.

I highly suggest staying here as it’s the only nice hotel in the park, and they have a decent restaurant (make reservations in advance if you like eating dinner before 8:00 PM). If you do plan a trip here, make sure you book your room as far out as possible. The best rooms with a view of the valley must be booked a long ways out, as the only rooms left when I booked 2 months ago were standard rooms with no view.

Please note that for those with electric cars, there are only 2 chargers at the hotel, and they are pretty slow. However, they are far better than the gasoline alternative. Here is the gas station nearby.

Our first hike was Desolation Canyon, just a few miles south of the hotel. This is a very cool hike that seemingly nobody knows about. We nearly had the place to ourselves, versus other nearby sites being crowded. The main reason is it requires driving on a dirt road, and it’s not well marked, but it’s just south of Artist’s Drive.

We then visited the most popular spot in the park, Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level.

It’s hard to see but the small sign on the side of the adjacent mountain indicates where sea level is.

There is a small spring-fed pool here that houses endemic snails that only live here. We didn’t see any snails…they must be pretty small.

The story is this spot is called “Badwater” because an early surveyor’s mule wouldn’t drink from the pool. You can walk out on the salt flats about a mile. The snow capped mountain is Telescope Peak, which sits at 11,049 feet.

Our next stop was Artist’s Drive, which is a paved one way road that winds around some of the most colorful spots in the park. The most popular stop is Artist’s Palette, with a multitude of colors in one location.

If you are a Star Wars fan, make sure you do some research on spots in Death Valley where they filmed parts of the original in 1977. One of them is right here at Artist’s Palette. There are several others.

We drove up to Dante’s View for sunset, and while it wasn’t as spectacular as some photos I’ve seen, it was still worth a visit. The view from this spot 5,575 feet above the valley floor is not to be missed. Badwater Basin is right below you.

This is a scene from the original Star Wars movie, taken from Dante’s View.

We had huge expectations of getting up early the next day to go see the Mesquite Sand Dunes at sunrise…HAH!!! Our “retirement mode” had us barely making breakfast before they shut down at 10:00 AM! Oh well. The sand dunes are nice, but I found if you walked away from the main areas you could actually see some wildlife. We saw a Zebra-Tailed lizard but jeez those little bastards are fast….so no photos! Seemed to be lots of Side Winder tracks, but no signs of the actual snake. Here is a selfie.

It is so bright in the desert I couldn’t see the screen so I had no idea if the selfie would turn out, but then again I took about a dozen of them, so one of them was bound to be ok. Thank goodness we don’t have to deal with Kodak development fees anymore!

The next stop was Mosaic Canyon, another very narrow canyon that you don’t want to be in during a downpour!

There were at least 2 high performance jets flying around from nearby China Lake Naval Air Base….made me think of Top Gun!  We then went to Salt Creek Interpretive Trail.  Very cool little hike with a shit-ton of Pupfish.

I should have taken a photo, but there was a huge family of people from Japan who were off the trail and in the water.  The signs clearly say stay on the boardwalk trail!  I finally had to call a small group of them out..and the mother spoke enough English that I knew they simply felt the rules didn’t apply to them.  Hell, they had a bucket they were trying to catch Pupfish in, and these are endangered species!!  WTF?

On the morning of our departure we did a short hike into Golden Canyon.  If you are a Star Wars fan do some research before the hike, as there are several filming locations in the first few hundred yards.

Kim is standing in one of the spots where the Jawas were watching R2D2.  Sorry, the first Star Wars movie was a big part of my life back then.

On our way out of the park we stopped at one last beautiful spot, Zabriskie Point.

All in all it was a great trip.  Not sure if we’ll be back as there are so many other National Parks to see, but I highly recommend a visit at least once.