I made us go to Death Valley on the way home. The kids were not thrilled to hear this.
We only have a few hours today to see it, so we only hit a few highlights.
Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes. Sandboarding is allowed here. But we didn't bring one. That would have been fun though!
The sand is ridiculously soft. The temperature was about 74 degrees so we could have stayed here longer but we had lots more to see.
Next is the Salt Creek Interpretive Trail. You can see the salt deposits on the creek bank in one of the pictures. There are little fish that actually survive here in the creek. The plant life is also adapted to live here in the salty conditions. It's called pickleweed I believe.
Zabriskie Point. Just a little walk up the hill on the trail to the lookout.
Dante's View. It was chilly up here. This is the overlook of Death Valley below.
We saw a little mountain goat in the parking lot.
Next we went to Artist's Palette. Another cool canyon area with a short walk to an overlook. No kids got out for this one. It was starting to get dark now. On the way we came across a friendly coyote approaching cars looking for handouts.
We made it to Badwater Basin in the dark, around 6 ish.
It is the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level.
We are on the Salt Flats, which are difficult to really see in the dark.
Someone picked up a salt chunk to check out.
McKinley wanted to test if it was really salt. It is.
So did Hayden.
Death Valley is one of the parks designated as an International Dark Sky Park. Some people were setting up telescopes for the evening. There was no moon that night, so I imagine it was going to be spectacular.
This grainy phone picture shows two of the planets that were easily visible while we were there. Venus and Jupiter or Saturn I believe.
My kids were done and wanted to get to the hotel that is another 2 hours away, so we couldn't stay to watch stars all night.
Then we drove to Pahrump to stay overnight.
