Death Valley Nat'l Park, Oct 25-26

What could be more discombobulating to the body than to travel from 8,000+ foot elevation at Mt Whitney Portal one day to -190 feet at Furnace Creek the next? Not much, I'd wager. Kind of a last-minute decision to visit the valley, but since we were that close ... we thought it behooved us to give it a go. We stayed in a nice, tree-shaded site at Furnace Creek C/G (no hookups) for two nights and made the best of our short stay. The first afternoon we toured Artist's Drive, a scenic 9-mile loop that showcases the multi-hued volcanic hills. What a place!

 

 

 

The next morning, we drove to Badwater Basin, which is 282 feet below sea level and the lowest point in North America. It is truly a surreal landscape of vast salt flats that, from a distance, look like prairie snow. We hiked out onto the flats maybe a half mile and still couldn't see the far side. Enlarge the middle photo and look carefully -- near the top you can see the red arrow I made pointing to the "sea level" plaque on the side of the hill above Badwater Basin parking lot!

 

The red arrow high above my head points to the -282 elevation!

Next stop was an uphill one-mile hike into Natural Bridge Canyon, which involved lots of climbing and was a lot of fun. Plus, nobody got hurt, always a good thing! Amazing that the mile return hike (downhill) always takes so much less time. The natural bridge (photo below) is huge. The trail ends at an impassable dry waterfall, so we had to quit.

 

 

 

I don't think that boulder is going anywhere, Jimmy!

 

Yup, no water today!

We followed that with another mile hike up into Golden Canyon, which had many "slot" canyons ripe for rock climbing -- we are becoming pretty good at this climbing business! This canyon was supposed to have interpretive trail guides available, but they were out - too bad. Our last stop was the Harmony Borax Works where we wandered between the remains of buildings, machinery, tanks & piping from the mining operation that dates back more than 120 years. (20-Mule Team Borax - poor ol' mules!) By now our feet were gone-gone-gone, but we located the Furnace Creek Warm-Spring-Fed Pool, a wonderful Olympic-sized pool - we dove in and stayed in! Ahhhh........Great day!