Spring 2023 California Saga, 3.21.23 - 4.9.23, Part 4 of 8, Death Valley National Park

This image captures what a lot of folks think is all there is to Death Valley. Known as “the hottest place on Earth”, this is where you envision the poor sap staggering through the heat, skin burnt and cracked, sweat pouring off his face. He has a canteen but after attempting to eke one last final drop of water to no avail, he angrily tosses it aside. Vultures hover impatiently overhead as the blazing sun shimmers heat waves off the parched desert floor. The cracked earth extends as far as the eye can see and it’s only nine in the morning. It is a good day to die.

While there is no doubt that Death Valley can live up to its name, within its boundaries lies a vast world of beauty and wonders so rich and varied that it staggers the mind. I didn’t know a lot about Death Valley before this trip. I too thought of it as a forbidding, stark place. I’d seen photos of Dante’s View and the white salt flats of Badwater Basin and wondered why it deserved national park status. But as I researched things to see and do in the largest national park in the continental United States, I became extremely excited to experience this place for myself and find out why I’d heard more than a few outdoor enthusiasts state that Death Valley was their favorite of all the national parks.

I believe I’ve found my calling. I’ve determined that I am a self-proclaimed “ landscape sommelier”. I specialize in pairing music to a landscape. It is roughly a four and a half hour drive to Stovepipe Wells in Death Valley from Joshua Tree. This is a desolate stretch of road. Even Andrew commented that when he thinks of the word “desert”, this is what he had in mind. As we drove along through this wasteland with hardly another vehicle in sight, I had Jay Farrar and Son Volt oozing from my speakers. “By the time we make it to Barstow, we’ll be more than halfway to hell”. Now I understand that lyric.

Once we turned onto Highway 190 we began a brutal 3,000’ climb to get over the Panamint Mountains. Several inches of snow blanketed the ground near the summit of 4,963’ Towne Pass but it all disappeared as we descended that exact same amount of elevation into the little village of Stovepipe Wells which rests at sea level.

There are only fourteen reserved RV sites with full hookups in Stovepipe Wells and they are in one nice neat little line in a gravel open lot opposite the “village”. A much larger barren parking area sits adjacent to the hookup area where tents and RV’s that didn’t make a hookup reservation in time can camp. To the north lies the wild northern part of Death Valley. West are the Panamint Mountains, east lies the Amargosa Range.

We were lucky enough to get the farthest RV site so we had full views not only of the Amargosa Range out our kitchen and bedroom window, but also the Mesquite Sand Dunes, one of five unique sand dune areas within the park boundaries.

The village of Stovepipe Wells consists of a quaint lodge, a restaurant, a saloon, a gas station (no diesel), a general store, an outdoor pool, bathrooms and showers. There is also a ranger station across the parking lot.

**The luxury RV Park at Stovepipe Wells**

Once established into our site, I could hardly wait to get out and shoot the dunes. I had given a lot of thought to how to go about photographing the sand dunes. It’s hard to walk with a lot of sand in your shoes so I brought an old pair of mid high hiking boots. This turned out to be a brilliant move. I never got any sand inside my boots so they did the job as expected. Blowing sand can quickly destroy a 35mm camera. Since most (all) of my shots would be with my telephoto, I put that on before I even left so I wouldn’t have to change lenses in the harsh environment. Armed with my iPhone and Canon DSLR, I headed for the Mesquite Dunes about two hours before sunset. The parking area is only two miles from Stovepipe Wells which was extremely convenient.

There were a lot of people there when I arrived. Most of them either hovered within a short distance of the parking area or headed pretty much straight out towards the tallest dunes which are about a mile out and almost two hundred feet high.

I was looking for pristine sand devoid of hundreds of footprints so I headed quite a ways east of the tallest dunes and then out where many more tall dunes resided. I had expected tough hiking in the sand but it was surprisingly easy to walk on. In the lowest spots between dunes there was hard packed sand and even some rock. The steeper sides of the dunes were difficult to climb, but if you approached them from the paths of lowest angle it wasn’t bad at all. Also walking along the spine of a dune was much easier than even a foot or two on either side of the spine.

I went out about a mile east and north of the tallest dunes and found some excellent patterns. I shot until the sun went down. It was very calm at first which was great but as the sun dropped a little bit of wind picked up. This wasn’t so bad and it made for some nice shots when the wind blew sand over the top of a dune and lit up in the setting sun. Specifically, the dune field ran in an east/west direction so I was looking for dunes that had ridges that ran more north/south. In this direction I could capture the contrast of the west side being lit up by the setting sun and the east sides almost black in shadow. For my first session shooting sand dunes, I was very pleased with the results.

I was still buzzing from my trip out to the dunes by the time I woke up the next morning. With six days to explore, we used our first full day as a driving reconnaissance day. The main hub of activity in Death Valley centers around Furnace Creek. It has fancy hotels, gas, several campgrounds, restaurants and bars and it is home to the main visitor center. This is where we made our first stop. I got to chat with the ranger about my plans and Bridgit got to check out all the swag in the gift shop.

Passing by several trailheads and viewpoints, we drove fifteen miles south of Furnace Creek and parked at the Natural Bridge Trail. Once again, being only a one mile out and back, this seemed like the perfect starter hike for all of us during our stay at Death Valley.

From the parking lot we had a tremendous view of snow covered Telescope Peak. At 11,043’, Telescope Peak is the highest point in Death Valley. There is a fourteen mile round trip trail to the summit from the opposite side of the park but I’m sure with the amount of snow it has seen that the trail and the approach road are still closed.

Unlike the slickrock canyons of southern Utah, the canyons we experienced on this trip in Anza-Borrego, Joshua Tree and this Natural Bridge Trail are more of a mud sandstone. Starting out, the trail almost immediately enters the canyon. A short half mile got us to the actual natural bridge, a mud sandstone span that crosses the canyon. We continued a bit further up the canyon until we came to a minor dryfall across the floor of the canyon. It was at a fairly gentle angle so I scrambled up it and continued a very short way past one other dryfall to a much more impassable spot which is where I turned around. All together the hike turned out to be one and a half miles round trip.

Having conquered the Natural Bridge Trail, we continued our mission. Driving further south we turned around just past the parking lot to Badwater Basin. By now it was lunch time so we drove north and stopped at the Devil’s Golf Course. True to its name, you would certainly have a devil of a time trying to negotiate the fairways in this place!

As we worked our way back towards Furnace Creek we drove the one way Artist Point Road. There is a particularly beautiful spot called The Artist’s Palette that I wanted to photograph before sunset. As we drove up Artist Point Road we came to a pullout full of cars. Several trails led to the top of a knoll so we got out to check it out. I thought the view from the top of the knoll was kind of bland and it didn’t really seem at all like the photos I’d seen of Artist’s Palette. We drove on and around another corner we came to the real Artist’s Palette Viewpoint. This was definitely the spot I wanted to shoot but as we continued along the Artist Point Road I saw a number of potential spots for photos.

Back at Stovepipe Wells we had some time to relax. We even ate dinner at the Toll Road Restaurant. Most of our meals we cooked at the RV either on the charcoal Weber, the Coleman gas grill or the Coleman gas stove. At five we began our drive back to Artist Point Road. By now the sun was setting around seven so I had a good hour and a half to shoot around Artist’s Palette. When we arrived there were still a decent amount of people there but many of them were already on their way out to go get dinner. I headed up a trail that went straight up into the rock formations.

It is called the Artist’s Palette because there are so many colors in the rocks here. I saw reds, various shades of tan and brown and even green. According to the park website, the reds are hermatite, the purple is manganese and the green is weathered volcanic tuff, whatever that is. Anyway, it was good that we waited until sunset as it added a richness to the colored minerals in the rock.