Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

We decided to detour through Death Valley en route to Vegas from Tulare, California. Everything we had read or seen said this was a “must-see” park. I’m not sure I would necessarily agree that it was worth the effort – it was a ton of driving – but it was nice and warm and I can say I’ve seen it now.

We entered the west side of the park and drove across the whole thing. It could be that the drive into the park was pretty deserted, or that the desert is only so interesting but it seemed to take a long time to actually get anywhere. That and there was absolutely no service, or services, for quite some time. We finally made it to Stovepipe for a late picnic lunch to discover there was a whole little village. It’s been really odd to see how different the services are in each national park – what’s on offer, what’s open, hours of operation, etc. there doesn’t seem to be any consistency between parks and so we often feel either over or under prepared.

After lunch we stopped at the sand dunes and wandered around for a bit. We kept our stop short because we had Roland with us, and he wasn’t allowed to visit the dunes. We stayed long enough to run around and then piled in for the next stop.

The rocks very subtly change colour in Death Valley – they range from purple to green and yellow. It has to do with the oxidation colour of the different minerals. We drove through the oasis where the visitor centre is, and then through artists palette which really shows off the different colours before arriving at Badwater Basin – the lowest point in North America at 282 ft below sea level. We played in the salt pools but again had to limit our time because there was no way (even if we had been allowed) that I was going to deal with the dog in that water and the salt mess aftermath. It was bad enough getting it off ourselves.

After a long day in the car we still had quite a ways to go to finally find the lights of Vegas. We passed through the town of Pahrump, which will forever be a family joke. It looked exactly how it sounded. We eventually made it to sin city, took a quick detour down the strip to catch the Bellagio fountains and finally got tucked into our airbnb.