Death Valley National Park

12/1/2018

On November 28 - December 1, 2018, we camped at Death Valley National Park in the Furnace Creek Campground. We had made plans far enough in advance to get a site with full hookups. Since it was winter, it wasn't really hot but it was nice to have the hookups.

We drove through Mojave National Preserve to get here, and discovered that the visitor center, a really nice restored train station, was closed because they aren't open on Wednesdays. The budget cutbacks keep taking their toll.

We did have to dodge some weather while we were here. There was a threat of rain the entire time we were here, but it didn't interfere with our visit. Since this was not our first visit, we saw many of the places we had seen on the last visit, but the scenery is so beautiful that it is worth visiting again. The valley south of the visitor center is quite spectacular, and we did go a few places we had not gone before. We took a ranger led walk in Golden Canyon. We learned from another tourist that some scenes from Star Wars were filmed here. We could imagine R2D2 rolling along.

The highlight of our visit this time was taking the road through Titus Canyon. This is a 4 wheel drive, high clearance one way road, and it is serious. We had serious fun taking the Jeep down the road. When we were about through the road, I realized that we had our dash camera going, so we had captured the trip as a movie. You won't see it here but ask.

Scotty's Castle is still closed because of the flash flood a few years ago. They are rebuilding it so that it can hopefully withstand a similar flood if/when it happens again.