Hot, high, and happy at the bottom of Death Valley

Visiting Death Valley National Park can be an overheated and exhausting experience in the best of circumstances. Touting itself as one of the hottest, lowest, and driest places on Earth, this huge area on “the outer edge of life” takes up a giant chunk of California along the Nevada border.

And here we’ve been trying to take it easy in light of Masayo’s trip to the emergency room last week for dehydration in Utah. Oops!

But the road trip dictates its own reality, and after skipping several key Parks in southern Utah I couldn’t stomach the thought of bypassing wondrous Death Valley.

This morning, before leaving the wild west silver mining town of Tonopah, Nevada, both of us got a great omen for today: each dropping $5 into some electronic slot machines in a gas station, Masayo instantly won $10 and within about twenty minutes I was $15 ahead. We both cashed out – free money!

But the best part, after a scenic drive through absolute Nowheresville, was that Death Valley was merely balmy. Temperatures later this week are forecast to be over 110º – in other words, normal for the area – but the big sign at Furnace Creek visitor center in the middle of the Park said it was only 85º.

Paranoid in my new role as Masayo’s part-time nurse, even I relaxed when I saw that. Maybe this valley wouldn’t be the death of us after all.

For a place so low and dry and harsh, Death Valley contains a surprising number of fascinating and varied locations and sights to experience. We’re only planning on spending the day here (no camping for us, thank you very much) and it can be hard to know what to see. You just have to try things and not worry about what you missed.

Just like any trip, really.

As it happens, while making sure to take it easy and not walk around too much (the blazing sun is harsh even when the temperature is relatively cooler in Death Valley) we chose excellently. Our first stop was at Zabriskie Point.

I have some history with Zabriskie Point: as a music nerd I once had a quasi-bootleg CD of Pink Floyd’s music from a movie called Zabriskie Point, and this was pre-internet when getting obscure music was much harder (and more rewarding, but I digress). To this day I haven’t actually seen the movie, but I know that it does indeed take place in Death Valley’s Zabriskie Point.

Plus I’ve been here before: in 1993, on my first cross-country road trip with two friends, we passed through Death Valley (at the time a National Monument, not a National Park) and because of my Pink Floyd fandom I insisted on seeing Zabriskie Point. We did, and there are photos from 24 years ago of us at this point. It was great fun to be back again after so long.

Zabriskie Point is a jumbled but contained little collection of badlands, a remarkable and curious view of which can be had after a short hike with crowds of tourists. From the top you look out onto a field of weirdness. Your eye follows the undulations of long round brown ridges, all lined up in neighborly rows or jutting across others. Splotches of color or spidery striations are splattered across this or that area. And all the while you bake in the sun, moving among the sunglasses-wearing tourists taking selfies and squinting into the dry Californian desert.

From Zabriskie Point, most tourists (and their giant buses) turn around and head to Badwater, the lowest spot in North America. But Masayo and I turned our rental car right instead, pulling off the main road into something whose very name made it unmissable: 20 Mule Team Canyon.

This turned out to be an unpaved but smooth dirt road winding impossibly between hills, towers of rock, and white crusty salt ridges. Under the hot blue sky above, we seemed to be the only people to be on the road. The car would rise and fall along steep ramps then turn hard to one side or the other, and every view that popped up was amazing all over again.

20 Mule Team Canyon is a short drive, taking maybe 20 minutes, but was an immediate highlight. And almost nobody sees it.

Back on the pavement we headed out to Dante’s View, high on a ridge from which you can look far, far, down onto the low plain that includes Badwater.

The drive itself was dramatic but it was Dante’s View that really delivered on what it promised: stunning views far below on a hot, salt-white floor stretching between two mountain ranges. The sun was high overhead but it wasn’t terribly hot up here. That, plus the fact that we were looking at something far away and straight down that we were heading to next filled us with a sense of anticipation.

Down a long lonely road you drive until arriving at Badwater, a kind of non-oasis in the desert with a parking lot, bathrooms, and not much else. A sign stuck in the salty ground gives the elevation: 282 feet below sea level.

My blood sugar was high, and I was conscious that Masayo shouldn’t be walking around too much in this aridity and heat, but we strolled along the bright white path for a few minutes, struggling along with the other panting and perspiring tourists. I was proud of all of us for getting this far.

Back in the car I took some insulin and had a protein bar. Heat often makes T1D’s blood sugar lower for some reason, but I wasn’t getting that effect today in Death Valley.

Another side road took us to an entirely unexpected explosion of rocky color called Artist’s Palette. At a small parking area – where there was only us and no one else – different minerals have turned several hills all sorts of different colors. It looks like it can’t possibly be natural – someone must have come up here with cans of spray pains – but no, this is naturally occurring graffiti. It’s right up the road from Badwater, Death Valley’s premiere sightseeing spot, but as the winding road to it is unsuitable for buses, very few tourists get to see Artist’s Palette.

We stopped by the visitor center to use the bathroom – both of us had been sipping water and (in Masayo’s case) Gatorade all day, even though we were mostly in the air-conditioned car – and began the long drive around sunset out of Death Valley and further into California and towards our hotel in the tiny town of Inyokern. And along the way, this great National Park had one more stunning sight for us to behold.

Sand dunes, sheer and smooth and hued a uniform light brown. A small-ish patch of the dunes lies to the side of the road in the eastern part of the Park and sports its own parking area and tourists running up and down the dunes, making footprints that will soon blow away and sinking up to their ankles and filling their shoes.

The sun was descending and throwing shadows of tree husks – and, at the right angles, even small lips of sand – across the ground. The air was heavy with the memory of the day’s heat but had cooled off enough that Masayo and I were able to stumble around for a while and not even break a sweat.

And that was our goodbye to Death Valley.

The slot machines of Nevada had promised us a lucky day and that’s what the travel gods delivered to us in Death Valley. As we sped along some very bumpy and out-of-the-way highways in California towards Inyokern I played Pink Floyd’s album More and Masayo slept. I thought back to everything we’d just seen in Death Valley – all the ruggedness and inhospitable beauty, the close-range inescapability of the area’s wild geology.

And the curious feeling of contentment I had, a sensation different than other Parks we’ve visited. Death Valley, so unforgiving and demanding, rewards its intrepid visitors with a serenity that only a humbled survivor can truly know.

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