Death Valley - A Taste of Badwater

Death Valley is so huge, it's impossible to see all of it without a lot of driving.  Since we're staying a week on the east side and a week on the west side, we decided to split up our drives into two or three episodes as well.  Today we drove Badwater Road, which stretches south from Furnace Creek along the east side of Badwater Basin, the lowest place in the North America, with an elevation of 282 feet BELOW sea level.

There's not a better place for getting an overview of Badwater Basin than Dante's View, a mountain viewpoint 5,476 feet high, along the crest of the Black Mountains, overlooking Death Valley.  Here is our view to the north along the basin --

-- and this was our view across the basin:

But there's nothing like a 360-degree view to help you appreciate the scale of the place.

Having gotten the overview, we drove south on Badwater Road along the basin.  Our first stop was the Devil's Golf Course, so named because someone once said that only the devil could play golf on a course like this:

The rough, sharp formations are mineral salts that came out of solution as the water they were dissolved in evaporated.  The salts were then sculpted by winds and rain,  making a boulder field of beautiful and dangerous shapes.  Here, David stands on some of the salt "boulders" for scale:

We couldn't resist a selfie with this unique landscape:

Death Valley is in the midst of what may be a "superbloom," which is a bloom of wildflowers that surpasses all expectations.  Such an immense and widespread bloom happens perhaps only once every ten years.  The blooms have a breathtaking effect on the slopes between the salt basin and the mountains:

These daisies are everywhere!

But there are many other types of wildflowers blooming now, too:

The National Park Service is so excited about this superbloom that they've produced a special short video on it, which is posted here.

The blooms are even working their way down onto the salt-crusted basin:

Nevertheless, the basin, which is the lowest elevation, can still seem the loneliest place, in North America:

We continued our drive along Badwater Road, and found the trailhead to hike up to Natural Bridge. It was about a half mile hike up a canyon to get to the stone bridge:

The bridge itself looks very sturdy.  According to the exhibit information, it was formed by rushing waters that found softer rock to tunnel through, forming the natural bridge:

The bridge dwarfs the little people hiking underneath it, and is large enough to frame the mountains in the Amargosa Range behind it.

Continuing our road trip, we turned up Artist's Drive, which was a roller coaster --

-- but it brought us to Artist's Palette, a riot of colors from black to brown to purple to blue and green:

We agree that Death Valley is much more diverse than we had imagined.  More than simply a desert or a sterile salt flats, it holds a wildly varied geology and -- at the moment -- some surprisingly rich wildflower views.  We can't wait until tomorrow and another deeper look at this majestic park.