Death Valley Day 3

Somewhere in the last ten days the daily one hour commit to photo editing before going to bed took a backseat on the priority list. Got a break yesterday evening when it was cold and raining out and the kids and me ended playing "name place animals things" at home.

We also started on a 500 piece puzzle which was messed up by the little one after we had almost assembled 50 plus pieces to connect because she got "fursrated".. she almost says it like "firstrated"! We might start that again as long as no pieces were damaged. 

Managed to edit Day 3 photos. Two more days of photos to edit still left!

For previous photos and trip description go here..

Day 3 saw us going straight to the Kilns through the Wildrose entrance of Death Valley national park. These are some magnificent structures built hundreds of years ago to make charcoal from local wood. They must be easily 25+ feet tall as the entrance is close to 6 feet. You end up driving through a dirt road and it is better if you have a Jeep. We were all praying that no big rocks hit our vehicle as it is pretty desolate out there and there are no cell signals.

After the Kilns we headed straight to see the salt creek. There is a nice wood path (that reminded us of the Petroglyph trail in Hawaii)  and you can walk it in 30 minutes or less and you can see the creek run by, small fish, birds if you are lucky and a lot of butterflies.. not to mention the vast expanse of salts.

We continued in the same direction and went to the Borax works next. Borax was the main thing folks mined from the salts. So they figured out it was easier to refine the borax locally and haul it in mule wagons instead of taking raw material across the desert.

Now of course all this is gone because there are deposits outside death valley that are thriving and have more elaborate mines. At some point there were thousands of tents on the vast expanse in front of this wagon exhibit that sits in the middle of nowhere.. mostly Chinese migrant workers!

After this the plan was to go to Golden Canyon. We saw a coyote that we almost ran over as it crossed the road! There was no one else on that road and why it chose to cross just in front of us is beyond me.

We went for a hike through Golden Canyon as far as we could go which was a mile and a quarter. San and the girls decided to stop halfway and return while the two and a half men went on! The sun was almost directly over us and the previous experiences of walking in a shade within the canyon were not applicable. 

There were no clouds either. So the sky was a nice plain blue but the photos came out with "something missing"!

After this it was a drive back to Furnace creek visitor center for lunch. There is an auditorium there that plays a video of what to see at Death Valley at regular intervals. We caught that video and spent some time looking at the nice displays in the Visitor center. After that it was  a race with the sun to go see Dante's View and Zabriske point right before sunset.

We saw some of the most fantastic views ever at these two places. You can see the highest and lowest point in the continental US from this place on a clear day and we had a clear day! What you see below is an expanse of salt called the Badwater Basin. 

The sun was going down sooo fast! We caught some amazing hues on the rocks..

Unforgettable views!

Wanted to stay there for a long time just to admire what mother nature had created over millions of years, but the 20 odd cars that were there started dispersing fast and it got dark very fast and we started down from Zabriske point..

We had one more day at the park to cover some more must see spots.. It only got better on the last day!