Death Valley Day 1

We will spend three more nights in Death Valley National Park before heading home.

We started the day going to the pond on the golf course behind the Furnace Creek resort, as there have been some bird sightings there. We saw about 50 ducks and some other birds.

Badwater Basin has a large lake right now because of the August 20, 2023 storm. The lake is currently a few inches deep, and will likely be gone by the middle of November.

The white crystals are borax, which was mined in the valley in the late 1800’s. Death Valley is the origin of 20 mule team borax, as they had large mule teams to haul the borax out and to haul water and supplies in.

The Natural Bridge hike was pretty easy.

The first mile and an eighth of the Golden Canyon hike to red cathedral is also pretty easy. Then it turns into a scramble over bigger rocks and up small dropoffs. Donna chose to skip the last couple hundred meters.

On the way back down, we saw a coyote run across the canyon and up a side canyon. We went up the side canyon a little bit and saw it looking out.

We drove Artist’s Drive a little before sunset, but it’s on the east side of the Canyon, and it quickly entered the shadow of the mountains on the west. The colors are better in the sunlight.

We watched the sunset from Furnace Creek again.