DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK

Jules’ Journal: IN OUR TOP 5!

By: Julianne Lillie, 3/16/23

I’m going to be honest, I had zero expectations for Death Valley National Park. The only reason we had it on our itinerary is because it was a major national park and we had to scratch it off our list. But I must say…. we were all blown away by how amazing this park is! We had an incredibly FULL day yesterday and enjoyed every second of it... and still didn't get to explore it all!

We actually entered into the park on Wednesday afternoon after we set up camp in Beatty, NV. We hit up the visitor center, got a map, visited with the park rangers, and the kids earned their Jr Ranger badges (#91!).

It rained on us the entire time we were in the park! Which was pretty ironic since they market the park as the Hottest, Driest, & Lowest place in North America!

We did catch some beautiful views of the park with the rainclouds, which I'm sure is super rare!

As we learned about all the different things to do and see in this vast park, the intrigue and excitement set in! Jaycie took it upon herself to do the research and create an itinerary for a full day in the Park. The night before Jaycie and Jason mapped it all out and unfortunately they had to whittle down the list from 10 things to only 8. We didn’t realize just how expansive this National Park is. It’s the largest National Park in the lower 48 states! (Alaska has the biggest ones.) In fact, it’s so big that the state of Connecticut could fit inside Death Valley National Park! (As we were leaving today, it took us 2 hours to cross the valley from the NV side to the CA side!) And because it’s so big, things are spread out and driving to each thing takes some time. So after mapping it, we figured we could do all 8 things in 14 hours!

We got up before the sun and packed a picnic lunch and drove a little over an hour to Golden Canyon for the Park Ranger guided hike/talk at 9am. The crazy thing is, when we left the camper it was 38 degrees F. After driving just 20 minutes inside the park the temperature had already risen to 54 degrees F! It’s crazy, as you descend every 1,000 ft in elevation, the temperature increases by 5 degrees F. As we were arriving for our hike, we thought about shedding a layer, but decided against it since it was pretty windy.

The hike/talk lasted about 1 hour and we hiked back into the canyon about ½ mile, stopping along the way to learn about the geological forces that created it and the history that it has. Ranger Rachel shared that this canyon was 1 of 8 places in the park that George Lucas chose to film Star Wars. And we can certainly tell why! It definitely has the “other worldly” look and feel to it! This whole park does… like you're visiting another planet all together! Here's a photo of the Star Wars crew filming at the location we were standing at.

We also learned from Ranger Rachel that this hiking trail was once a paved road that had been washed out & re-paved by the NPS numerous times! In the 1970s, the NPS decided not to repave it and let it be a natural hiking trail instead. But you can still see there are lots of huge chunks of asphalt and remnants of the washed out road throughout the hike. Here's Jett sitting on one of the largest chunks we saw.

They called this Golden Canyon for its beautiful gold rock color. You can certainly tell why in this photo below:

After that hike, we headed to stop #2A: The Devil’s Golfcourse. We could drive all the way to this stop. It was a vast field of jagged dry rocks covered in stark white salt crystals with a view of the snow-capped mountains in the distance. It was crazy looking!

Up close you could see the salt crystal spikes!

From there, we kept on driving to #2B: Badwater Basin to see the salt flats. This is the lowest place in North America which is 282 ft. BELOW sea level.

Long ago this was a lake which evaporated over time leaving its salt behind on the surface. It was so wild to see… it looked like ice at first as it was packed down on the trail.

We hiked 1 mile out and reached the stark white, crusty geometric shapes. It was incredible to see the salt crystals! We just wandered all around admiring its unique beauty! Then we walked 1 mile back to our truck.

From there, #3 was driving the Artist Pallete drive. This is a 9-mile scenic drive through beautifully colored rocky cliffs, mountains, & rocky mounds.

Jaycie and I jumped out and climbed to a scenic overlook. It was just beautiful to see all the different layers of rock and colors!

Then we drove to Natural Bridge trail head and hiked ½ mile to an naturally arched rock. It was really neat!

Here we had our first & only wildlife sighting (other than birds), a common blanched lizard. Proof there is LIFE in Death Valley!

We also found this weird cylindrical cut out in the rocks. Very strange looking!

After taking some photos, we hiked back to our truck and ate our picnic lunch. Stop #4 was Stovepipe Wells Village where we filled up our water bottles and scoped out the dinner options available. We learned that we could pick up a to go order for dinner which would save us on time if we needed it. So that was good to find out!

After our brief rest stop in the village, we headed North to #6 which was a 45-minute drive. We drove up to Ubehebe Crater.

This crater was caused by an explosive volcano about 2,000 years ago. On our drive it was pretty neat to watch the colorful rocky landscape turn to dark lava rock hills/mounds in almost an instant! We hung out there for a while just admiring the beauty. And then we realized we were going to be cutting it close to catch the sunsetting at our next destination, so we jumped in the car and headed back to Stovepipe Well Village.

At the village we stopped into the Badwater Saloon to pick up dinner to go.

Then continued back down south to stop #7, Dante’s View. We ate our dinner in the car to save time as we were racing against the sunset to get into position! But we made it just in time!

Dante’s View is a 5,474 ft scenic overlook that has a breathtaking view of almost the entire valley with the snow-capped Panamint Mountains in the distance! It was the perfect spot to watch the sunset over the valley.

We hiked/bouldered about 3/4 mile out to the edge to get a better view. It was a display! We took a million pictures and popped a squat to just take it all in! We felt like we were on top of the world!

We could see Badwater Basin down below where we had hiked out to earlier that morning!

After watching the sunset, we drove another 30 minutes back up to Harmony Borax Works, an old borax mining site. There they do a nightly Ranger-led Night Sky Talk & Stargazing Program at 8:30am. The Park was awarded the designation of an International Dark Sky Park in 2013..

We arrived about 8am so we could grab a good spot. Only red lights are allowed once you leave the parking lot to reduce light pollution and allow our eyes to adjust. We followed the red lights along the walking path and brought a blanket to sprawl out on once we got there.

When we looked up we saw SO many stars!!!!! We’ve done stargazing programs at other “Dark Night Sky Parks” however, this one is the largest! And it was a nice clear night with the moon set low behind one of the mountains, so no light pollution at all! I’ve NEVER seen this many stars in my life!

We could see so many constellations which the Ranger pointed out to us using a high-powered laser beam. She also pointed out Venus, Mars, and the entire Milky Way! We could also see a Nebula under Orion’s belt using our binoculars! A Nebula is a nursery cluster of baby stars forming. It was so cool to see! We also got to play around with this app called Stellarium (Shout out to Mitch Louderback who told us about it). Check out these cool screenshots. It gives you an idea of just how many stars we could see!

We also saw several satellites orbiting and even got to see 2 shooting stars which made it super special! After the 1-hour program it was 9:30pm and we headed back to the camper. On the 1-hour drive home, the last 20 minutes of the drive we realized we got cell service back because all our phones started chirping at us! We had such a great time in the National Park we didn’t even miss cell service! (Well, maybe Jaycie did a little!)

It was a late night after a long 14-hour day, but it was so worth it! If you ever get a chance to visit, we would recommend several DAYS exploring the park rather than cramming it all into one day! Out of the 91 National Park Sites we’ve visited thus far, this one is now in our TOP 5!!!!