Death Valley

We took a day trip over to Death Valley, Ca. It was truly unique in colors, landscape and texture. Most of the valley is below sea level, like the Bad Water Salt Flats.







The salt flats went on as far as you could see. It was kind of surreal standing on this white salt flat, no wind and absolute silence and looking up to the top of Telescope Peak at 11,200' covered with snow, and clouds moving over it.







At the far end of the flats was a place called the Devils golf course. It was made up of these salt formations, that seemed to go on forever. It was a 17 mile drive from the Bad Water Basin, the middle of the flat, to this end to see the formations.




Here you can see how far the formations go. They were solid salt and sand stone and very difficult to walk-on.









Next, we went on a hike in the Golden Canyon. This formation kind of stood out by itself, light brown sandstone surrounded by redrock on one side and the white salt flats on the other. It was very cool to walk through these deep canyons that had been carved out by centuries of water flowing down from the peaks and winds. The thing you noticed again, was the absolute silence of the area.

















One of the things I hate about winter, it gets dark quick. The sun started setting behind the mountains at around 3:30! Our last stop was the Artist Drive and Artist pallet area. Ansel Adams has many works from this area. (Isn't most of his work black and white? It just does not do this area justice!) The color contrasts were amazing. The hills went from pinks to deep reds, blacks, browns and blue-greens from the copper veins. Unfortunately the pic below was taken in low light and the color contrast are just wiped out. You'll have to trust us that the colors here were amazing.



For us, the outdoors and experiencing this kind of nature is a whole lot more fun then being in a loud, smoky, seedy casino. It was probably the most enjoyable day we have had since getting into Vegas. -Rich-