Death Valley from the Oklahoma Point of View

Badwater: 282 feet below sea level

Flying into Las Vegas, we rented wheels and spent two nights in Beatty. The day inbetween, we explored what's left of the booming gold town of Rhyolite and then visited Bad Water, the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere.

It's here that highway 178 curves around a small, temporary inch-deep pond that forms now and then on the vast salt flats. It's a place to take pictures. Look up on the mountain side across the road to the south, someone has posted a sign high up in the rocks that proclaims "Sea Level." Drink plenty of water. The Park Service recommends at least four liters per day.

Zabriskie Point

Temperatures average from 115 in July to 39 in January and December. Records are both from 1913, 15 degrees in January and 134 in July.

The most breathtaking viewpoint in the park, however, is Dante's View, a mountain-top overlook more than 5,000 feet above Death Valley's inferno. Again, there's a paved access road. Take another slug of water.

Death Valley is our country's largest National Park, some 3.3 million acres of desert and mountains. A visit to the Furnace Creek visitor center is the best place to start.

The Racetrack

Attractions include Wildrose Charcoal Kilns, ten structures resembling beehives that date to 1876 and provided fuel to process silver and lead ore. Other highlights include The Racetrack, where rocks mysteriously slide across the dry lakebed and leave behind long tracks for visitors to ruminate about. There are the Eureka Dunes — at nearly 700 feet they are the highest dunes in California — and Ubehebe Crater where a massive volcanic explosion blasted a 600-foot deep crater more than 3,000 years ago. Only 15 miles from the lowest point rises Telescope Peak in the Panamint Mountains, more than 11,000 feet in elevation.

This mirage is at the Furnace Creek Inn

Plan your nights in Beatty (which has a swell museum), drive up to Goldfield, a massive city that came and went nearly 100 years ago, leaving substantial buildings as a reminder. Plan at least a day for Death Valley and all its accompanying venues. And then, and only then, head to Las Vegas.


Lawrence Gibbs, Stillwater, OK