Death Valley Daze
I write this a few days after returning from a 5-day road trip to Death Valley. I’ve wanted to go there for several years now and started planning our trip when we purchased the Land Cruiser back in late August.
Now I’ve got a bajillion photos to sort through, select, and edit before creating the image galleries and some extensive captions to tell the stories from this trip. And we have a lot of stories to tell, trust me! And as outdoor legend Yvon Chouinard once said, “It’s not an adventure until something goes wrong!” Well, we certainly had an adventure or two.
Our trip involved a total of 1, 250 miles of driving. Most of those were driving to and from Death Valley from our home in San Jose. But we also racked up 450 miles within Death Valley National Park itself, and 130 of those were on dirt.
Our time in Death Valley was limited, as is always the case. We did however manage to see a lot of the famous sights: Stovepipe Wells, Furnace Creek, Zabriskie Point, Badwater Basin, Teakettle Junction, The Racetrack, Titus Canyon, Wildrose and Homestake camps, Shorty’s grave, Ubehebe Crater, and more.
The weather was mild for late December, with daytime highs in the 60s-70s and down into the 30s on our first night camping in the park. Clouds rolled in for the second day and that made the next night of camping warmer, with lows in the 40s. We experienced no rain or snowfall while we were there, although we saw small patches of show at higher elevations.
We had a total blast! I hope the buzz from the trip lasts a long time, or at least until the next road trip! My fleece top and the down jacket I wore while camping still smell of campfire smoke, a wonderful reminder of the good times…
The trip reports and galleries will take a few posts, as usual, so look for them to roll out over the next week or so. You might want to subscribe to the RSS feed or email notification to see the new posts as they come out. You can do either (or both) via the “Subscribe in a reader” link on the right.
Happy New Year!
