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The sign at the park entrance. I took this shot as I left the park though. The lighting was way better than when I had arrived earlier in the day. |
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I spent last weekend with some friends in Las Vegas, and headed out early Sunday (or at least as early as you can after a 5:30am bedtime) to spend the afternoon in Death Valley National Park before hitting the road back to Los Angeles. I only had a couple of hours to spend there, but even so, I was amazed by the variety of incredible landscapes. And I have to mention that the drive to and from the park was pretty fantastic, too. It's been a long-time desire of mine to take a road trip through the desert with the top down - it's the total cliché thing, but it was everything I had hoped it would be. |
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Holding the camera up in the wind to see the road stretching out to the horizon. |
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Pretty great landscapes to drive through, both front and back. |
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Another one taken from the car as I was driving under a totally refreshing cloud. They really were a nice break from the sun as the desert got hotter. |
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Once inside the park, I followed the signs up to "Dante's View". It's a point up on top of one of the tallest mountains that gives you a sweeping view of Death Valley below. And of course all that white stretching off into the distance down there is the salt flats. |
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Hiked a little ways off of the parking lot to get some different foreground views. |
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Zoomed in from above on where a big, dry, salty river bed empties out onto the basin floor. |
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You can see a few of these massive, egg-shaped, evaporated pools from up there. I like the texture of that dried up salt. Supposedly, on really hot days, you can just stand out there and hear it cracking all around you. Wasn't quite hot enough for that to happen when I was there unfortunately. |
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Zabriskie Point, in the badlands. It definitely deserves to have a really cool name like that. |
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There were all kinds of great geological formations in this area of the park. |
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A lot of it looked completely other-worldly. Almost organic. |
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Once down on the valley floor, I checked out "The Devil's Golf Course". I can totally see the "devil" part of it, but I have no idea what about this landscape would ever make anyone think "golf course". |
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All the stones in this section of the valley floor were covered with salt crystals that looked like they were mimicking volcanic rocks. |
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In with the macro lens on some of the sharp, volcanic rock-looking salt. |
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This was truly the middle of nowhere. I was very happy I had gotten my car completely checked out and tuned up before being isolated out there. |
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And then it was on down to "Badwater Basin". Of course it's called "Badwater" because it's bad, super-salty water that you could never drink. |
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Little alien-looking salt blooms everywhere. |
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And despite the strong salt content, the water was teeming with life. This was taken straight down into the pool. You can see a wormy thing just left of the middle of frame, another little guy in the left bottom corner, and a few other things that were swimming around in there. There was just living stuff moving everywhere. Seemed like even more than I typically see in freshwater ponds. |
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Stand up from the pool, turn to the left, and you see this long, salt-covered river bed jutting out into the valley floor. |
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Not sure what these little craters were all about, but they were just kind of scattered around. They really added to the feeling that you were on another planet. |
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Some smaller streams branching off. |
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The further in I got, the more I started seeing distinct patterns in the salt. |
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I eventually came across big beds of these crystaline salt formations. They were no more than a half inch each, tops. It looked almost like grass made out of ice. |
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Got in close with the macro to figure out what these crazy little hair looking things were all about. |
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Pulled back out a bit. It's the hairiest little salt crystals I ever saw |
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And then it was time to start the five and a half hour drive home. For at least a hundred miles after leaving the park, I was driving through scenery like this. I kept wanting to stop and get out of the car to explore, but I wanted to get home for some rest more. |
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