Death Valley NP, CA

#112 (November 20, 2022): Since we have a shorter drive today, the kids played in their forts one last time before we drove 2.5 hour west through Nevada’s desert to Amargosa Valley, parking at Longstreet Inn Casino & RV Park. Today, Emily’s parents, Mawmo and Dado, are flying to Las Vegas and driving here to join us for the next 9 days of our journey. Yay!!! Knowing that we were headed to see Mawmo and Dado made it easier to say goodbye to our beloved desert “playground” at Valley of Fire State Park. We ate authentic Mexican food and drank bottles of Mexican soda for dinner at Ruby’s Grocery Store just up the street from the campground. Oh, how nice it is to have full hookups (aka showers and clean laundry) again!

#113 (November 21, 2022): Mawmo and Dado are here!!! Yay!!! We are all so excited to see them and to have them join us on our adventures (and for Thanksgiving!!). Our first adventure together: Death Valley National Park! We drove 40 minutes from our campground to Death Valley’s Furnace Creek Visitor Center to first watch their film, look at their exhibits, collect maps and info from the park rangers, and, most importantly, find out which roads and trails are still closed from August’s flooding.

Afterwards, we hiked a 2-mile trail in Golden Canyon, a former film location for Star Wars before Death Valley became a national park in 1994.

We drove from the yellow rock-walls of Golden Canyon to Devil’s Golf Course, a landscape of jagged, serrated rock salt blades, a terrain on which “only the devil could play golf.” We tasted and confirmed; yep! It’s salt!

Next, we popped like popcorn, laughing in disbelief, as we drove the SUPER bumpy road to Natural Bridge trail, a 1-mile trail to a rather ugly arch made from washed rock, gravel, and sediment crudely cemented together; this bridge is quite different from Utah’s smooth sandstone arches and bridges.

From there, we drove to the white salt flats known as Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level. We walked out onto the salt flats to better appreciate its network of naturally formed geometric shapes.

Driving back toward Golden Canyon, we drove the one-way only Artists Drive to Artists Palette, another Star Wars filming site, where the terrain is colorful sand-art-like hills of pink, mint, chocolate, tans, and creams.

Death Valley is such a bizarre place. The landscape changes so dramatically in such a short distance; in fact, all these wildly different and seemingly unrelated geologic wonders are all within just a short 12-mile drive on Badwater Road.

Later, we drove by the Borax Museum, which was simply a yard of wagons, equipment, and a train engine used during the days of Harmony Borax Works.

Then, we walked through some ruins at a site nearby where borax was once processed; the ruins were complete with an original 20-mule team wagon.

We finished our visit to Death Valley at Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, probably best known for the scene from Star Wars: A New Hope in which R2-D2 and C-3PO are lost on the planet of Tatooine. The sand here is so soft and fine! The kids would have loved more time to play in the sand longer, but by this point, the sun was setting, so it was time for us to make the drive back to our RV.