Death Valley National Park, California

The hottest, driest, lowest place in the U.S. is appropriately named Death Valley, which sounds like a particularly unappealing place. But Death Valley National Park has a lot to offer and is surprisingly diverse. We stay two nights, which is the minimum required to experience all the park has to offer.

Summertime temperatures can reach more than 120 degrees F and the average annual rainfall is less than two inches, but we are here in November, with temps in the 80s, and when we leave our lodge the morning of our first full day in the park, random raindrops scatter the area. The spitting lasts two minutes or less.

We drove into the park via the southern entrance from Nevada the day before and stopped to hike at the Salt Flats, Devil’s Golf Course and Badwater. The average evaporation rate at the bottom of Death Valley is 150 inches a year. Considering the park only gets 2 inches of rainfall, you can understand that it’s pretty dry.

The Salt Flats used to be a body of salt water. Now it’s just what its name says: flat land covered with salt. From the road, the flats seem to stretch a couple miles to the mountains, all covered with salt crystals, which crunch under my shoes and leave tracks. Mark doesn’t walk out as far as I do. At not quite a mile, by my estimate, I stand still so the crystals no longer crunch. I have never experienced a silence like this: no computer hum, no traffic, no rustling leaves, no gurgling water, no chirping birds. Complete silence. Like I’m in a vacuum. It’s almost eerie.

Devil’s Golf Course is like the Salt Flats only somehow the earth clumps up under the salt.

Badwater is flat with salt and also a little water. But it’s bad water; a cowboy crossing the valley to the California Gold Rush led his horse to the rank water, but it refused to drink. That’s how this place got its name.

At Artist’s Palette, the most colorful area of the park, we drive in amongst the blue and red rocks and wait for the sun to set before a nice dinner at the restaurant at Furnace Creek, where we stay for the night.

The next morning after breakfast and the spitting of rain, we drive back south and hike the four-mile Gower Gulch loop plus the half-mile option to Red Cathedral. We hike the last couple miles along the gulch bed, and towards the end we make precarious climbs down what, if the water were running, would be waterfalls, one with a 10-foot drop or so and a couple other smaller ones.

After a rest we drive north and stop to walk the mile long Salt Creek interpretive trail with hopes of seeing pup fish, one of the few species that can survive in that briny water. We do see minnows. Or are they little pup fish? A dragonfly touches down briefly on the water’s surface, and we see a worm too, what is actually a fly larva. The plants, just green sticks branching off another, are called pickle weed. We chase tiny lizards from the trail.
Further north we hike to the Ubehebe Crater and the smaller unnamed crater Mark and I call the baby Hebe. On our way, a coyote crosses the road. Mark slows so I can get a picture. The animal walks towards our stopped car. If the door was open, he’d jump in. He is looking for a handout.

While driving along, Mark spots a tarantula in the middle of the road. We stop and get out to take pictures.

Just like we planned, we’re at the sand dunes in time for the sunset. We walk barefoot in the warm, loose sand before Mark gets stickers twice and we decide to put our shoes back on.

We sit at the top of a dune waiting for the show, but a thick cloud obscures the whole western horizon so we miss our sunset. Still, we sit more than an hour, playing tic tac toe in the sand or people-watching through the binoculars.

Our lodge tonight is just up the road. We have dinner at the place there and then enjoy the nightlife just outside: a cowboy playing the zephyr and the guitar and singing in his yodel-y voice. He’s really good.

Death Valley National Park. So full of life. Who knew?