Death Valley National Park // Days 1-2

In October we went to Death Valley to celebrate my 23rd birthday. This was the first time I was able to spend my birthday with Nathan in four years! It was a big deal for us.

We both drove our vehicles - I took my jeep and Nathan took his truck. Death Valley has a lot of off-roading trails and we both wanted to be able to take our rigs. We brought two-way handheld radios so we could talk the whole time.

The entrance to the park.

Day one we spent driving, driving, driving. It took about six hours to get there, and then we spent the rest of the day driving on trails and finding our first campsite. Inside the park, we drove on Saline Valley Road most of the day. Its a completely dirt road but can be done in 2wd for the most part. There were some muddy spots that required 4wd, though! We only saw two other vehicles on that road all day. We wound up over the mountains (7,000 ft!) and then down into Saline Valley, where we spent the night completely alone for miles.

Campsite #1

Nathan bbq'd some hot dogs for us.

Our first campsite was seriously perfect. We were surrounded by mountains, and not much else. We slept pretty well in our tent, too (aside from the desert fox that decided to investigate and wake us up. he was such a cute lil guy!). A huge thunderstorm rolled in that night, but we didn't get rained on at all. The thunder woke us up and we could see the lightning dancing on top of the mountains, but the storm never reached us. It was so peaceful here.

The next day we packed up camp and tackled Lippincott road, which runs up through the mountains we had camped underneath and into Death Valley. It took us two hours and we both had to use 4wd. The trail was so narrow in some spots and the drop was so sheer down the side of the mountain... it was scary! But so so so much fun. The view at the top was absolutely spectacular. Once again, we didn't see a single soul and we had the whole mountain to ourselves.

Lippincott Road pops out at the Racetrack, which is a cool playa where rocks MOVE across the desert floor. Seriously, they move on their own. You can read about it here. Unfortunately for us, the Racetrack was completely flooded from all the rains that had been hitting the park recently. So, no cool alien rocks for us. It was still beautiful, though.

Flooded Racetrack

Flooded Racetrack

We then followed Racetrack Road back to the main park. This. Road. Was. Awful. It was a dirt road, but not the fun off-roading type dirt road. It was just pure washboarding for 26 miles. My back was jello by the time we finished it, and I think my brain was sore from rattling around in my skull. I really hadn't realized how far out of the way the Racetrack was.

Along Racetrack Road is the famous Teakettle Junction. We didn't add a teakettle to the collection, but I enjoyed reading the ones there. Here were a few of our favorites:

From there, we continued down the road to Scotty's Castle. I don't have any pictures of Scotty's castle, but it was built in the early 1900s and is pretty cool! Scotty was an asshole, though. He was a con man to the bone. He would sell gold ore from a mine in Colorado and say it came from his land on Death Valley. He would then sell that land for millions of dollars to prospective buyers and miners. We didn't tour the castle because it looked like it was going to rain and there were flash flood warnings out.

Instead, we headed to Beatty, NV to grab some lunch. We ate at this cool bar/grill with tons of signs and dollar bills all over the ceiling (those are my fave!). While we were there, we both got alerts on our phones for flash flooding expected in the area. We struck up a conversation with the bartender, who advised us to stay in town and get a hotel. He even offered for us to stay in his extra room (which was really nice) but we opted to press on. We headed back towards the park.

We wanted to drive Titus Canyon in the morning so we looked for some high ground to camp for the night. We didn't even bother setting up our tent - we just camped out in the jeep. Good thing we did, because the weather got ROUGH. It stormed and rained and we even got hailed on!! It was dime-sized hail! Thankfully we didn't get washed away. In the morning we set out for the canyon.

That wraps up days 1 and 2 of our adventure... next post will be days 3 and 4!

Death Valley National Park // Days 3-4

Day three we woke up early (we survived the hailstorm, yay!), made some coffee, and headed out to conquer Titus Canyon. It. Was. Beautiful.

Titus Canyon trail

The trail was awesome, and not very difficult. I think you could do it all in 2WD if you have high clearance. The only times you might get into trouble is when it rains! The canyon totally floods when it rains and gets pretty muddy. Another cool thing - we saw two tarantulas on the trail.

Titus Canyon trail has a ghost town along it - Leadfield. The story of Leadfield is pretty sad - 300 people moved there in 1926 in the hopes of striking it rich. They were led there by wild tales of gold and fortunes. Unfortunately for them, it was a scam, and they went poor and hungry. By 1927 the town was gone

Just past Leadfield, the canyon gets narrower. At this point, you enter the Titus Canyon Narrows which is by far the coolest part of this drive. The walls reach up hundreds of feet and you can see where raging floods have carved away the rock over thousands (millions?) of years.

There is also a spot along the trail where you can see ancient Native American petroglyphs carved into the rock. Sadly, some modern a**holes have come along and defaced some of them with their own graffiti. But we found some that were in perfect condition too.

We emerged from Titus Canyon early in the afternoon and made our way to the main road. A couple miles down the road we encountered a couple of park rangers with a gate across the road that said "road closed." They asked us where the heck we came from because all roads in the area were closed due to flash floods and flood damage. They seemed shocked we came through Titus Canyon! They let us through, though.

We moved on to the Death Valley Badlands next, were the old Borax mines were. A short (and hot!) hike to Zabriskie point led us to some fantastic and unique rock formations. A nice older man offered to take our photo for us, which was really sweet! Now we have this wonderful photo of us all sweaty and dirty after three days of no showers. I love it!

After we left Zabriskie Point in the late afternoon, we headed out to find our last campsite. We didn't pick any of our campsites ahead of time, we just drove around until we found somewhere. You are allowed to camp off any trail in the park free of charge, which was really nice! The only things we had to pay for on this trip was gas money and food. Best kind of camping trip in my opinion. We stopped by Mequite Dunes while we were searching for a spot.

Mesquite Dunes

We ended up taking a dirt trail out along the mountains near Panamint dunes to find a place to camp. It was so beautiful with dunes on one side of us and mountains on the other. Again, we saw no other people. It was very cool! We also saw these old abandoned cars along the trail. Makes you wonder what the heck happened to those guys.

Our final campsite was quite wonderful. We stayed up late reading and watching the stars, and finally had a clear night with no rain or storming.

Campsite #3

All in all, it was quite the magical trip. Death Valley is so huge and full of such varying terrain. The rock formations and even the plants are so unique, and sometimes strange. There was large chunks of volcanic rock all around our last campsite so when I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, the light of the moon made it so surreal and made me feel like I was on a different planet! Way cool.

Bottom line: If you ever get the chance to go to Death Valley - GO!!! You won't regret it, and will probably make amazing memories that will last a lifetime. I know we did :)