Death Valley

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March 30-April, 2018

Bryce and I decided on a spur of the moment trip to Death Valley California. I have always wanted to go and see Scotty’s Castle. But as we got looking online the Castle was going to be closed because of extensive flood damage a couple of years ago. And they won’t be opening it up until 2020. We didn’t know or think there would be a lot of other stuff to see- boy was I wrong.  I am already wanting to go back and see the parts of the park we couldn’t make it to. With only a quick weekend trip we seen quite a bit but will definitely return to see the rest. We drove over 900 miles in 2 1/2 days. Camped for the first time in many years. And it was really fun. 

Friday night we drove to LasVegas and headed over on highway 95 towards DeathValley. Arriving just about 30 minutes before Sunset which was perfect timing. Our first stop was Zabriski point. Perfect place for a Sunset photo. Lots of others must have felt the same way. Quite a few people there enjoying the beauty.
We weren’t sure where we would be camping for the night so we decided since we didn’t know the area we had better stay in a campground the first night. So just about 10 miles up the road was Furnace Creek. We stayed in the Sunset campground. This is at sea level. It was about 80 as we crawled into the tent. A little warm but as the evening progressed it went down to the lower 60’s. Perfect for camping under the stars.

We woke up early to beat the heat and our first hike was Natural Bridge.  We were the only ones on the hike.

Natural Bridge

Length: 1 mi (3.2km) out and back round trip
Time: 45 minutes round trip
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation Gain: 86 ft (26m)



Our next stop was The Devils Gold Course. There were miles of jagged brown rock. This Place rarely receives any rainfall and so the salt crystals continue to grow and form pinnacles that are now about 3 feet deep. You have to be careful walking around in this stuff it can scrape you up pretty bad if you fall.



We then drove through the “Artist Drive”. My favorite section of Artist Drive is known as Artist’s Palette where the rocks display many of the same colors I saw at the Valley of Fire but the terrain was more rugged.

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