A Billion Years Laid Bare
It’s one of those places you think about as desolate, hot and dry, deadly even. As we drove in the first time, I expected a soundtrack to be playing from a Clint Eastwood western, an eerie and foreboding tune. The reputation of Death Valley, plus the name itself, portends drama and mayhem. While some of that may be true, we are leaving after thirteen nights with a renewed respect for the desert and a deep fondness for a place we expect to be a regular stop for us in the future.
The largest National Park in the lower 48, DVNP is home to the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere along with 11,000 foot mountains. It’s part of the basin and range region of the western U.S., in which a long series of parallel mountain ranges are separated by hot dry valleys. The mountains are deeply striped, and salt and sand swirl in geometric patterns through the valley. In the canyons, the light hits the volcanic badlands setting them aglow. Over a billion years of geologic history are on display here, not neatly ordered like in the canyons of the southwest, but in giant fractured swirls. Massive alluvial fans sit at the base of the deep canyons that are carved into the mountains, a testament to the powerful flash floods that rake the park, sometimes catastrophically.
We stuck to low elevation hiking on this visit, given how much colder it is at elevation, and had a grand time exploring canyons and craters and dunes. We barely scratched the surface of the places to explore since you are free to walk anywhere in the park; just pick a canyon and set off! In most places the hiking is difficult, deep gravel composed of rocks the size of fists, hikes we sometimes characterize as slogs. They are worth it, though, to see the shifting rock formations, to experience the depth of the canyons, and to be in silence.
When we arrived here nearly two weeks ago, the campground was mostly empty, but as the week built towards Thanksgiving, more and more people arrived, huge caravans of families, sometimes taking over three or four campsites and setting up camps that looked as if they meant to stay through the winter, though they ended up leaving after three or four days. The crowds overwhelmed us a bit, and Thanksgiving sort of snuck up on us. We’ve been following warm weather for several months so it didn’t really feel like November.
The only real sign for us of the changing season has been the shortening days. We’ve never been camping in the winter, so mostly we were concerned about staying warm. The dark, however, has been an interesting twist. The sun has been setting at 4:30pm and we cook mostly outdoors, so dinner has become a very early endeavor. These adjustments to the rhythm of our days are welcome, though, as we continue to learn more about what it means to live our Minnie life.
After the holiday crowds cleared out, the campground got quiet again, and we got some lovely new neighbors who are fellow long term travelers; two down from British Columbia, and one from Nevada City, CA. They were loads of fun and invited us to join their campfires. It was nice to sit and laugh with new friends by a warm fire on the dark chilly nights, surrounded by more stars than we could possibly take in.
Death Valley is another Dark Sky Park! We’ve spent every evening with our heads craned back staring at the three-dimensional display of stars in velvet black skies. In the two weeks we’ve been here, we’ve seen more shooting stars than the two of us have seen in our entire lives combined. We even got to attend a ranger-led star party and stare through their telescopes at nebulas and star clusters.
Our last night in the park, the barest sliver of a crescent moon rose above the mountains and then vanished as quickly as it appeared. A kit fox cried out not far from the Minnie, an elusive creature we have yet to lay eyes on though we have heard one on a number of occasions. Perhaps next time. There will be a next time in Death Valley, and a time after that and so on. We love this place and are excited to come back and explore more.