We flew into Las Vegas and drove out to DV through Pahrump. A pleasant drive which improved the further from Las Vegas we got!
The areas of the park on our “must do” list included Zabriskie Point, Badwater, Artists Palette, Golden Canyon, Stovepipe Wells Sand Dunes, Scotty’s Castle, Rhyolite and the Racetrack. We ticked them all off except the last one. The Racetrack eluded us but it won’t next time!
Some highlights:
Zabriskie Point is very accessible, being only 100m or so off Hwy190. This is a stunning sunrise location for photographs with colours changing every few minutes as the sun climbs above the horizon behind you. There’s plenty of room to move around without hampering other photographers view and compositions. Two of the three sunrises we saw were here.
Stovepipe Wells Sand Dunes (also known as Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes) are a few hundred metres off Hwy190 but they are not easy to get into with the sand being so soft and “mountainous”. I clambered out of my bed in the dark and drove the 20 or so miles north from the hotel to Stovepipe Wells. Car parked and walking shoes on I sweated buckets hiking way into the dunes to get to the location I wanted. There were 20/30 other people doing the same thing as me and I feared that I wouldn’t get the shots I wanted without “intruders” but it turned out to be perfect. There is loads of room here and keeping others our of the frame was very easy. Sunrise in the sand dunes is great because, not only does the soft low sunlight reveal all the curves and textures in the sand, the dunes themselves are pure and “foot-print-less”. A trip there for sunset would not be as productive in terms of finding pure, untouched sand.
Rhyolite is a ghost town near Beatty. Worth a visit especially when coupled with a drive through Titus Canyon.
Scotty’s Castle looks amazingly out of place in this desert environment. Although named after the rogue Walter Scott the Castle was actually built by Albert Johnson as a vacation getaway for himself and his wife Bessie. The story behind the Castle is “boys own stuff” and a visit there is a must if you are in the NP for more than a day.
Any trip to DVNP is not complete without a visit to Badwater, at 86m below sea level the lowest elevation in the US and the second lowest in the world. The valley is overlooked by Telescope Peak to the west and the drop from this 3368m peak to the floor is twice that of the Grand Canyon. Other slight detours from the Badwater Road include Artists Palette and Golden Canyon, both super evening locations with the warm setting sun illuminating them beautifully.
The only lowlight in the trip was not getting down to the Racetrack. The journey involves a 27 mile drive on a rough unsurfaced, one way in and one way out, track. The very negative recommendations from the park rangers gave us the “willies” and we took cold feet. Warnings of tyre damage, getting stuck in the middle of nowhere with no mobile phone signal, the threat of “dying” were all too much and we chickened out. Next time we’ll pluck up the courage and hopefully come away with one of those famous moving rock images.
Some useful links:
Death Valley National Park - http://www.nps.gov/deva/
Scotty’s Castle - http://www.nps.gov/deva/historyculture/scottys-castle.htm
Furnace Creek Ranch - http://www.furnacecreekresort.com/
Here come the photos. If you want to see more images from our trip visit our galleries at:
http://www.pbase.com/davidleask/america_march_2008
