Death Valley To See the Flowers March 2016: Sunday, March 20

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Up at 6:00, on the road by 7:00, as planned! We drove about 90 miles to Beatty and a required stop at the Death Valley Candy Co. There is also a nice hotel/casino (Death Valley Inn?), for future reference. (Note: Here we find a brand new electric car charging station! Who in the world would ever drive an electric car this far out into the wilderness?) Another 30 miles or so brings us into the park. Lots of flowers along this Daylight Pass road. Stopped for flower photos.

Once we got down to the valley floor, it was getting warm! We stopped first at the Visitors Center and the general store. Lots of people around! We don't think we've seen the park this crowded. The reason is probably spring break and that we tend to come in the shoulder season (?) From there we headed up to Zabriskie Point, my favorite place in the park (or any park, for that matter!) We hiked for a ways on the Trail that goes down to Golden Canyon.

From there we drove up to Dante's View, elevation about 5500 feet. Its much cooler up here - about 70. Made our lunch with a view! Hiked a bit; found some more flowers.

By the time we got back down to the valley floor, on down to Badwater, the temperature was 103 degrees! Lots of people walking out onto the salt flats. On he way back toward Furnace Creek, we took the Artists Palette loop road which is spectacular!

We'd seen everything we meant to on this one day, so we headed back to Tonopah, arriving there at about 7:15, just 15 minutes later than the goal I had set that morning! Another nice meal at the hotel restaurant.

So, Tonopah is just over two hours from the park, an easy, fast, beautiful drive! The Tonopah Station hotel is great and their restaurant is just fine. As for the flowers, the reason we made this trip. We found many varieties of wildflowers, but I'm not so sure they aren't always here. There were masses on yellow flowers, but they are small and don't make too much of an impression. (If you look at photos on FaceBook, its obvious we were about 3 weeks late!)

Long day tomorrow, all the way home!