Park 47 Reprise: Death Valley (Part 2)

1/3/15. Last summer, Jason, Catherine and I traveled through the western part of Death Valley (the Panamint Valley area) but we gave up going any further because of the extreme heat and our worries that Catherine's car wouldn't make it up the mountain range without overheating. We promised ourselves that we would return to Death Valley from the Nevada side.

I'm thrilled to say that today we got to do that! We took a full-day tour out of Las Vegas so that we could enjoy the day without driving or navigating and it was a great choice. We left early in the morning and spent the entire day until dark in the park. It was a scenic tour so we stopped at many places and got to see a great variety of geological formations that were amazing, alien, and overwhelming. It was truly incredible!

We started at Dantes View which is a high point on the eastern edge and has a view of the entire canyon. There are no words to describe the scale of the park.

Next we drove down towards the valley and stopped at the Twenty-Mule Team Canyon that was filled with badlands where Borax had once been mined. I had never seen anything like this so it was absolutely fascinating. The ground was soft and covered with a hard crust -- like at the beach after a rain. We climbed to the top of one of the mounds to get a view of the badlands.

We drove into the valley next and stopped at the an area called "Devil's Golf Course". This had crazy looking salt crystals that were "floating" on top of an underground lake. The salt leaches up from below. The rocks were hard and very sharp. We were warned not to try to walk on them.

We then stopped a few other places, including Furnace Creek for lunch. The temperature was just around freezing when we left Las Vegas but in the valley it rose to about 60 degrees. We were able to shed our coats and enjoy the clear sunshine.

Next we went to the Badwater Basin which has the lowest elevation in North America. Here the salt flats have dried up and curled into patterns across the land.

After that we stopped at the Devil's Cornfield that had rows of desert plants across a wide plain.

It was now late afternoon and we spent a short while playing in the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes. These looked like Hollywood kinds of desert sand dunes and the sand was extremely fine and powdery having been blow here through the mountain pass. The sand was soft as quiet as we walked on it and it clung to everything. Truly remarkable views!

We left the park and made one more stop at the Rhyolite ghost town on our way home. The sun was setting and there was a full moon that beautifully lit up the sky. What an amazing adventure!

Park 53: Lake Mead National Recreation Area (and Hoover Dam)

1/2/15. Catherine, Jason and I drove into Las Vegas from California on New Year's Day and got settled into our hotel. This morning we drove to the Hoover Dam. I had been here as a child, but Jason and Catherine had not yet seen it. We walked across the dam and admired the impressive American ingenuity and engineering. Catherine thought it was so cool that the towers looked just like those in the game Riven.


We also went up to the new Tillman Memorial Bridge and crept across, hugging the inner wall because the height is so terrifying! You can see the amazing views of the dam:

Next we drove to the Lake Mead Recreation Area, which really surprised us with the beautiful colors, especially the blue water. We stopped at the Alan Bible Visitor's Center for an overview of the geography, flora and fauna in the area (including snakes and tarantulas- yikes!!) and we got a lot of park passport stamps to add to our collection.

This area was so amazing with all the different colors in the mountains, hills, water, and shore, that we decided to take a drive around part of the lake. We headed north along the shoreline, and the scenery just got more and more beautiful.

Compared to our national park trips this summer, the weather was delightful - in the 40's most of the time, with lots of very bright sunshine.

We suspect that the drought in the southwest was the reason that the water level was so low. You could see the bands of light color where the highest water level reaches. By the time we got to the Lake Las Vegas area, there was no lake at all. The ground was extremely dry. Once again we were impressed with the rainbow of colors in the hills, canyons, and mountains in the area.

We returned to Las Vegas mid-afternoon, really pleased with our little day trip and amazed again at the beauty in the desert. This really got us excited about our trip tomorrow to Death Valley!