Death Valley National Park & Las Vegas

During the month of November 2015 I was in Las Vegas to attend the SEMA show. Click here to see a report on the automotive show.

I rented a Jeep and took 3 days (2 nights) to visit a tiny bit of Death Valley National Park. Temperatures were very decent, in fact it never got hot! Wish I would have had more time to visit this park, but this is better than nothing.

Here are a few pictures and a bit of information.

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Death Valley National Park is a national park in the U.S. states of California and Nevada that is located east of the Sierra Nevada, occupying an interface zone between the arid Great Basin and Mojave deserts in the United States.

Approximately 95% of the park is a designated wilderness area. It is the hottest and driest of the national parks in the United States. The second-lowest point in the Western Hemisphere is in Badwater Basin, which is 280 feet (85 m) below sea level. 

Zabriskie Point is a part of Amargosa Range located east of Death Valley in Death Valley National Park noted for its erosional landscape. It is composed of sediments from Furnace Creek Lake, which dried up 5 million years ago—long before Death Valley came into existence.

Death Valley's Furnace Creek holds the record for the highest reliably recorded air temperature in the world, 134 °F (56.7 °C) on July 10, 1913.

The Ranch at Furnace Creek offers accommodations in a casual, family-like setting. As you wander around the western-themed grounds, you’ll feel like you’ve been transported back to the 1800’s when this site was established as a working ranch. 

A group of European-Americans that became stuck in the valley in 1849 while looking for a shortcut to the gold fields of California gave the valley its name, even though only one of their group died there. Several short-lived boom towns sprang up during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to mine gold and silver. The only long-term profitable ore to be mined was borax, which was transported out of the valley with twenty-mule teams. 

For the first 8 miles, the road crosses Mesquite Flat and climbs a broad alluvial fan before reaching the canyon mouth. The road drops into the wash and becomes rocky and rough. One mile past the end of the first narrows, a side road leads up to Marble Canyon. 

Panamint Springs Resort is a small, rustic, western-style, resort located in beautiful Panamint Valley in Death Valley National Park that provides lodging, camping and RV services, a restaurant and bar, and a gas station with a well stocked general store.  Marvelous views of distant sand dunes and the soaring 11,000 foot high Panamint Mountains complete the setting for leisure dining and relaxation. 

Titus Canyon

This popular road is ONE-WAY from east to west. The road re-enters the park and winds through the Grapevine Mountains, then drops down through one of Death Valley’s most spectacular canyons. 

A series of Native American groups inhabited the area from as early as 7000 BC, most recently the Timbisha around 1000 AD who migrated between winter camps in the valleys and summer grounds in the mountains.

The Furnace Creek Resort is situated in a lush oasis surrounded by the vast and arid desert of Death Valley National Park. This resort presents a complete contrast to the desolate desert landscape and an oasis that consists of an 18-hole golf course (the world’s lowest course at 214 feet below sea level).

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