Day 121 - Death Valley National Park

We were up and off by 09:00 as we had a long day ahead of ourselves. We started by making the 2hr 45min drive into the heart of the Death Valley National Park where we located the Furnace Creek Visitor Centre where we could purchase our park pass. The whole drive to this point was very scenic; again offering completely different landscapes to any we’d already seen in America so far. This place was very baron; consisting of lots of rocky hills of varying shades of reds and browns. On the way we made a quick stop at Mesquite Sand Dunes where we hopped out to check out the sandy sights – it was hot; reminiscent of the weather in Alice Springs. Thankfully though it wasn’t this bad; the temperature was 37.7 degrees but the air was like hairdryer heat!

We ventured south east of Furnace Creek until we reached Dantes View. This spot offered a great panoramic view of this desert landscape and also a view down onto the lowest point in the U.S (Badwater Basin) which is 86m below sea level.

We then drove back up the road and made a stop at Zabriske Point where we were treated to even more great vistas for Corrie to be let loose upon.

We got back to Furnace Creek then turned south and made the 13 or so mile journey down to Badwater. We parked here and braved the crazy heat to walk out into Badwater Basin to have a look at the huge salt lake and take a few more snaps.

Driving back up the road we detoured off up the Artists Drive scenic drive and made a quick stop at the Artists Palette viewpoint on this route.

Then it was pretty much time to make our way back to the motel as it was about 15:30 and we had another 2hr 30mins or so drive back. The sat-nav took us a different way back, a quicker way, but this was to our advantage in more ways than one as we saw even more of the impressive country on the long drive back.

Danny was pretty tired after the 6 hours he’d spent driving today but we were both hungry and so we drove down the road from our motel to get some good Asian cuisine at a local restaurant before Danny could finally slob out.