Anyone Here Been To Death Valley

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Death Valley doesn’t make my top 10 list of America’s Best National Parks. I’ve only been there when it’s hot (May 2008, temps 114F and June 2010 temps 112F). A winter visit may allow you to enjoy hiking, but in the heat, all you want to do is hop out, snap a pic at Badwater, and leave. Oh, and, the restroom facilities smell exactly how you would imagine human waste simmering at 114F.

According to the National Park Service, Death Valley gets nearly a million visitors per year. If you are staying on the major routes, during normal hours, I feel reasonably certain that someone would stop if you had car troubles. Having said that, It wouldn’t surprise me if no one came by for days on some of the lesser traveled routes. There’s only one gas station in the park (I think), but don’t plan on getting gas there unless you have to. The prices are about double of what you’d pay in Las Vegas.

I convinced some of my family member to take a road trip to see the US this past June. I had planned the route and was planning to forgo a trip to DV in favor of a trip to Crater Lake. I had related to my sis that although I was glad to have seen DV, I didn’t need to see it again. Sis said that she wanted to include DV in the itinerary. So we did. After leaving Death Valley, 9 of the 10 of us travelers agreed that we didn’t need to see DV again. But everyone was glad to have seen it.

After exiting DV on the west, we took CA 178 (I think) and went through the creepy little town of Trona. This site tries to put a nice spin on the place. But this site is more accurate. Neither are affiliated with me. Trona left a greater impression on me than DV as it seemed like the setting of a horror movie come to life.

Sure, if I had unlimited resources, I would like to go back to Death Valley. But I’d visit Bryce, Zion, Arches, CanyonLands, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, BadLands, and a few other national parks again before I would go back to Death Valley. Did I mention that Death Valley is not my favorite national park?

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We went for a few days in the early spring a year and a half ago, and stayed in Stovepipe Wells, which is at the west end of the park. Not nearly as fancy as Furnace Inn, more of a traditional motel setup, but the food was good, it was a lot cheaper, and you can see the Dunes from the parking lot. We drove down from the Bay Area, so we came in from the West.

Plan to do a lot of driving - things in the park are far apart. The weather for us was great, and there were flowers, but not as many as sometimes. Second Scotty’s Castle as a good place to visit. Up that way is a crater (not a meteor one) which is awesome - I have a picture of it I took as the wallpaper on my laptop.

I would not want to go in the summer, but when we went there was nothing there I didn’t like.

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Went there on a geology field trip around 1993. A few memories stand out:

  1. It was amazingly beautiful. The panoramas from the top of nearby peaks are stunning.
  2. This you may have heard - it’s HOT. We were in buses which could not use air conditioning when off of paved roads. I don’t know for sure, but it must have been 120 inside the bus. I’ve never since experienced sweating from every pore in my body simultaneously. At one point on a ride like this, we exited for a lecture on an alluvial fan where the wind was blowing so hard it felt like getting out of an oven into a freezer. Very cool.
  3. The nearby town of Darwin is about the most surreal, creepy place I’ve ever visited. It looked like a set in a Stephen King story. You must go there.
  4. Already mentioned, Scotty’s Castle is worth seeing. The one thing remember is his fake front door (I believe) with a gun slit to one side so he could shoot unwanted visitors.
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I think I stayed there in 1987. We entered DV from the west - coming from Yosemite. I remember a long, uphill road that went on for miles. It wasn’t very steep, but the rental car couldn’t handle it. We had to stop several times in pull-outs to let the engine cool down. There were supplies of non-potable water in each pull-out so you could refill your radiator, so I am sure many people had the same problems as us.

It was my first time in a desert and I was aware of all those stories about how cold it can get in the desert at night. Like buggery. We had the a/c blasting all night and it was as hot as hell. And this was late September.

There were bats flying low over the swimming pool and taking insects. That was pretty cool, although it didn’t look enticing for swimming if you don’t like being dive-bombed.

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Death Valley is a geologist’s delight. For example, Mosaic Canyon has polished limestone walls. Artist’s Pallette is a hillside covered with splotches of color caused by decomposing minerals. Devil’s Golf Course is an area of huge salt crystals growing up out of the ground. Zabriskie Point looks out over a wildly ridged badlands. The Racetrack is a plain where rocks mysteriously move about on a mud flat, leaving tracks behind. Ubehebe Crater is a 600-foot hole caused by a volcanic explosion.

Death Valley is a place that rewards patience. There are many beautiful and interesting sites in the park, but they are very spread out. You have to seek things out. Death Valley is not a good place to spend a lot of time in the campground.

Several posters have already mentioned the weather. Death Valley is the hottest place in North America. In the summer it’s so hot that it can be dangerous if you’re unprepared. Here is a PDF chart of high and low temperatures by month. My advice is not to go there from May through September.

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Great pictures. I love that I can order a coffee mug or tee shirt with you on the front.:smiley:

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Scotty had the idea that he’d answer the door and be attacked by two people; hiding out of sight and standing to either side of the door. He designed the “gun port” with a metal (?) piece in the middle, so it would split the bullet and get both of the bad guys.

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I was going to mention Stovepipe Wells also. It’s plainer, less famous, and cheaper than Furnace Creek Inn – at least it was twenty-five years ago. When I made the reservations there, the call had to be placed through an operator(!) – no direct dialing.

amarone, that business about deserts cooling off at night is high desert. At a couple hundred feet below sea level, the valley parts of Death Valley is quite obviously low desert and the thicker atmosphere doesn’t let things get as cool. The Phoenix airport is 1,250 feet and mid-nineties for the daily low is quite the norm here for July and August. Mahogany Flat campground in the park is 8,200 feet; even Wildrose at half that would get chilly after sunset no matter how hot it is during the day.

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It’s very much worth going to. I’ve been there a few times and it’s best if you have a small 4x4 truck in good condition - there is much to see well off the paved roads, and when you get into the mountains the roads can get rough. A drive up Hanaupah canyon towards Telescope peak is nice (A friend and I tried to pop telescope peak from that direction one new year’s eve. A day of hiking took us up to about 8,000 feet and waist deep snow, that 's as far as we made it but what a hike. Barely got back to our camp by nightfall (we camped in the canyon).

Titus canyon is a nice drive, it would probably be better in convertible so you could get a good look above you, but again you need a high clearance vehicle. You can do that the same day you do a nice little hike to the Keane Wonder Mine.

Getting to the racetrack, same thing, it’s a rough road but fun. Since the distances are so great, it’s best to just plan on backcountry camping (Death Valley is one of the few places that I consider car camping to be backcountry camping. Though I’m sure that the backpacking can be good, just getting out away from the campgrounds is nice.)

And if deserts in general interest you, make sure you make it to Big Bend one day. Large contrast between the Mohave and the Chihuahua deserts.