Monday
It’s 4:15am when the alarm clock goes off and it’s not a mistake! We want to enjoy dawn from Zabriskie Point after having enjoyed sunset when we arrived in the park. It’s 45min away and when we get there it’s still dark. A few people are already there, waiting; and of course some photographers with their tripods. The show is once again magical, we lose the stars little by little, then the sky turns from black to dark blue, then to herald the sun, red tints are added to the mix. We stay for about an hour, admiring the light-show on the surrounding mountains. People keep on arriving but the best of the show is already over. Back on the road, we head to Dante’s view. The road climbs in the mountain for about an hour. But the plunging view of the valley is worth all the zigzags we had to endure to get there. Icing on the cake, no one is up there we have the site for ourselves. At our feet on the valley floor, we can clearly see what’s left of the lake. Right now it’s only a salt lake but whenever there’s a big storm, it pops back into existence. Being there also makes it very clear that this valley is sinking between the 2 mountains; we had some explanation of the geological process in a leaflet but that’s the place where the explanation becomes real. We don’t linger too long there, it’s already 10am and even though it’s much cooler at Dante’s view obviously, it’s going to be very hot already at the bottom of the valley. We now understand why the people who used to live here where spending the summer in the mountain. As the crow flies, Badwater basin (altitude -86m) is very close; right at our feet at the bottom on the mountain with stand on but we haven’t rented a flying car so we’re left with no other option than to drive around the mountain.
Badwater basin is the lowest point of all of North America. As far as the eye can see is a salt lake. There’s a pond next to the road but that’s it. There’s no shade and we feel like eggs in a pan. A little further down the road, we stop by a place aptly named Devil’s golf course. Instead of being flat, the salt here aggregated into little mount. The joke is that only the Devil could play golf in such a place. We don’t stay very long, once again the sun is forcing is back into the car. On the way back to the hotel, we have one last stop for the morning – Natural bridge canyon. It’s a nice little 1 hour walk in a canyon (with shade!!!) to reach a… natural bridge. It’s quite big and once again the culprit/architect/artist is water. Difference of toughness in the rock created this. The river used to flow above but kept on digging until it found a very resilient chunk of rock. At that moment the flow was forced to the side but the water, patiently, kept on digging. And it found a way under that resilient chunk of rock so it could get back on its original track, leaving that rock above the water as a bridge.
It's 12:30 but we've been up and running for 8 hours already so it's time to head back to the hotel for a well deserved nap. We're running on fumes but Furnace creek is around the corner and saves the day. It would not have been fun to run out of gas in the desert. A big 3-4 hours nap later (or a half-night of sleep depending on how you see it), we get back to the same area to see what we left out this morning. In the meantime the car became an oven, the car's thermometer displays a mind blowing 140F (60C) and we have to wait a few minutes with the AC blasting to be able to enter the car. Our 2 items for the evening are Artist drive and the golden canyon. The first one is a loop in the foothills with a few vista points. We can see rocks of many different colors revealed by erosion; Greens, blues, blacks, whites, … a paradise for geologists.
It's getting late but we have one last thing to do and we can't skip it. The golden canyon is where they shot the scenes where R2D2 gets captured by the Jawas and where Luke Skywalker is attacked by the sand people. Once more the place is aptly named; it's very... yellow. It's past 9pm and the temperature is finally nice. We get deeper into the canyon for about half an hour but the sun is seriously setting and we have to head back. It's dark by the time we finish the hike. We should have had our head lamps with us but the phone worked just fine.
We planned something special for our last night in Death Valley; The sand dunes of Mesquite Flat by night. We don't plan on hiking, we just want to get away from any source of light and enjoy the cloudless night sky. We can see a gazillion of stars and the camera is even able to capture the milky way. It's almost as impressive as Wadi Ram (Jordan). We spend a good while there, lying down in the sand, enjoying the stars. Death Valley was definitely worth it, we haven't seen everything there is to see here but we leave with unforgettable memories.