Early Morning Melancholy
The alarm woke me at 3 AM this morning and I proceeded to pack my car in a sad mood. My aunt got out of bed and we spent a little time chatting before I reluctantly hit the road in the dark around 4:30 AM. At least there wasn’t any traffic to deal with! About two hours later I was driving directly into the rising sun, nearly blinding me, and two hours after that I was descending in the western half of Death Valley National Park.
Death Valley National Park
In August 1998, a few months after I graduated from Ohio University, I visited my aunt in Los Angeles. The way I remember it, I wanted to visit Sequoia National Park, but she convinced me that we visit Death Valley instead, which was okay with me because I had recently seen the movie Zabriskie Point and thought it would be cool to see it in person. My aunt recalls the opposite story, insisting that she’d never have suggested visiting Death Valley in August and that I talked her into it. Regardless of how it happened, the memories of that visit (e.g., getting lost in the desert, how hot but dry the area was, and the stars on the drive back) were a primary reason why I wanted to return some day.
The drive through Death Valley felt longer than I thought it would. Maybe I hadn’t paid close enough attention to the distances, but at times it felt like the drives between each point would never end. My route took me north to the west of the actual park. The roads were more along the lines of cobblestone than pavement, the straight stretch from Ballarat to Panamint Springs being memorable because it made me feel so small due to how little the surroundings changed despite how fast I was going. There’s also no cellphone service in the valley and luckily I had my paper road atlas to give me comfort as I made my way past the (amazing) Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes to the visitors center at Furnace Creek.
Zabriskie Point and Badwater Basin
There wasn’t any doubt that I’d have to visit Zabriskie Point again, even though it was a rather long tangent being that my primary destination was to see Badwater Basin this time around. After hiking up to take some panoramas of Zabrisie Point, I returned to Furnace Creek and then headed down to Badwater Basin. It was one of my favorite locations of the trip. As I got closer and closer, the landscape became noticeably alien. The rocks and plants visibly looked beat-down and scarred, and then there were the clouds that looked like spaceships. It was all weird down there. That being said, it wasn’t horribly hot being that it was only mid-May.
Exit South Stage
After shooting a bunch of videos and photographs, I left Badwater Basin for Las Vegas. Today, I looked at the distance from Badwater to Shoshone, California, and it doesn’t surprise me that it’s a nearly 60 mile drive. Again, I must not have fully appreciated the distance, because it felt like I was driving endlessly. When I arrived, I filled-up my gas tank to the tune of something like $5 a gallon (hey, I wasn’t chancing running out of gas in this part of the country) and got directions to Las Vegas.
Las Vegas, Nevada
The trip from Shoshone to Las Vegas was a relatively quick one. After stopping to buy flowers for my uncle’s wife and finding a liquor store, I easily found my uncle’s house. He had a barbecue cooking all day for me and we ate shortly after I arrived. Unfortunately, the day had worn me out and I ended-up turning-in relatively early around 8:30 PM or so.
Image Gallery
- Leaving San Diego Left before the crack of dawn in order to avoid traffic. This turned-out to be the only real black sky driving I did on the entire trip out west.
- Sunrise It was nearly impossible to see the road with the sun there, so I decided to take a picture?
- First Glimpse of a Valley But, not Death Valley. At first glance, I thought that was Bad Water down there, but Death Valley is in-fact on the other side of the mountain range in the distance.
- Who's Ed? I don't know who he is but that's a sweet memorial in the middle of nowhere. (No more vertical photos, dummy!)
- Trona Wildrose Road Driving on this road all by myself made me unbelievably happy. I could just stop, get out, take pictures... soak it all in without a worry.
- Trona Wildrose Road The dark mountains off to the right are not beneath a cloud's shadow. They are black. It was weird, but there's a lot of weirdness down in Death Valley.
- Glamour Shot, Rough Road The road was oddly bumpy, look at it! Black mountains in the background, too.
- Death Valley National Park And, I made it back! So cool.
- No Cellular Service Down Here Believe it or not, this was the first time on my trip that I kind of wanted to know where I was and my phone didn't work. Nice to have a road atlas at a time like this.
- Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes Weird... sand dunes? Big sand dunes!
- Zabriskie Point Come in, 51. Your number's up!
- Zabriskie Point The crumbling land.
- Badwater Basin Look at those clouds! Again, it's just weird down in Death Valley.
- Badwater Basin
Video Gallery
- Death Valley National Park: Entering Death Valley View Location Returning to Death Valley National Park was a dream come true. The last time I visited, it was late August, so it was a bit cooler this time around.
- Death Valley National Park: Zabriskie Point View Location The story is that I begged my aunt to visit Death Valley in August of 1998 because of Zabriskie Point. I'm a big Pink Floyd fan and had recently seen the movie of the same name that used their music in the soundtrack. I had to splice together a couple of shots here because I didn't do a good job planning the shots and there were a lot of people around.
- Death Valley National Park: Driving to Badwater View Location Despite the fact that it was cooler in mid-May, the landscape down in the valley is just plain weird. Everything looks beaten down and alien, especially those clouds! Fun drive.
- Death Valley National Park: Badwater Basin View Location It was honestly as weird as I'd think it would be. Again, everything is off down here. The colors are weird, the sky is weird, the clouds are weird and the ground is definitely weird. I could've stayed here for hours, but I had to move on.
Places Visited
- Death Valley National Park
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