One day and night in Death Valley National Park
From Tioga Lake campground, we drove south down US 395. We had heard great things about spots along 395, and had the ranger at the Inyo National Forest office not terrified us that our car was 100% certain going to be broken into by bears (he shared that his trunk had been ripped open upon forgetting a small bag of trash), we would have been interested in exploring these areas. Having felt like we tempted bear fate enough over the last 6 nights, we elected to continue to Death Valley. On the way, we did take some time to explore the natural hot springs that are located near the town of Mammoth Lakes (famous Mammoth ski resort). Before the hot springs, we stopped in Mammoth for some bagels and enjoyed them with the smoked salmon Patrick purchased way back at Tillamook a few weeks prior (vacuumed sealed, don’t worry). We found the Sherman Hot Springs (google actually located it, but left on Benton Creek Road, then slight left on Whitmore Tubs Road, then eventually right onto a dirt road). There are a lot of natural hot springs in the area, some are private and some are public. If private, that means if occupied, you can’t join. If public, as long as there is space, you are more than welcome to join others. Sherman Hot Springs is a small, private tub, large enough for about 4 people comfortable. It is located next to a small pond/lake and was fortunately open when we pulled up! We soaked for about 20-30 minutes. Very serene sitting in a nice hot tub with beautiful scenery all around. One car did pull up while we were sitting in the tub and they waited from a good distance until we were finished. There was a pipe bringing in new hot water, which we ran to keep water flowing and make it hotter. We believe it is procedure to shut the valve upon leaving. After the hot springs, we continued to the town of Bishop for a quick stop at the grocery store to supply us for what we thought would be a few days in Death Valley.
On our way into Death Valley from 136 to 190, there is Father Crowley Overlook, which gives a nice view of Panamint Valley. There is no official park entrance, so we weren’t able to pick up a map of the park. Fortunately, we had looked up campsites when we had service earlier in the day, so knew where we were headed. We arrived at the Emigrant Campground (first come first serve and free) around 5 pm and there were only two other groups there. We agreed to stay there for the night as it was somewhat centrally located (Death Valley is very, very large) between Wildrose (where we had heard we should hike) and Furnace Creek (visitor center). It was hot in Death Valley, quite a change from Yosemite (especially during the night). We got the tent set up and then put up our kingdom porch (canopy). I felt the energy zapped just getting camp set up in the sun. It’s important to note that peak season here is actually from October to April due to the heat. Once the sun went down, it was much more tolerable. Dinner was chicken tacos (pre-seasoned, chopped chicken from the store).
During the night, our kingdom porch blew a few campsites over (we hadn’t anticipated any wind and I guess my small rocks were not enough to hold it). That should have been a sign of what was to come, but we didn’t pay any attention to it. We did stake the porch and tent, but the ground was hard, so we couldn’t get them entirely into the ground. We added a couple rocks for good measure. Then we set off for Furnace Creek and the visitor center. We picked up a map of the park and some suggestions for the next couple days. There are a lot of sights to see by car, so we elected to do most of that today to get it out of the way. With our other two days, we planned to hike at Wildrose and then play golf in the valley (they had some good deals going). Our first stop of the day was the Badwater salt flats. You can walk out quite a ways to see the salt flat formations. It was very windy down in the valley, which we contributed to the fact that we were, well, in the valley. Next, we drove through Artist’s Palette, which had some colorful rock formations/bands in the hills. It was still very windy here, but we were still in the valley. Following the Artist’s Palette drive, we continued further from our campsite to Dante’s View. It was an expansive view of the entire valley, hard to see much detail because it was so vast. A little too vast for our liking. And it was still extremely windy here. At this point, we were feeling very anxious about the wind and if it would be holding up in this wind (over 40 mph at times we later figured out from the weather report), but we were over an hour from the campsite, so we decided to see one last viewpoint – Zabriskie’s Point. This overlook was of a smaller scale and would have been enjoyable had it not been so windy (pellets of sand hitting your face) and had we not been so anxious. We then hurried back to the campsite to evaluate the damage. I was worried about having to tell the rangers that our tent was blowing somewhere in Death Valley National Park. When finally we arrived, we were relieved that everything was still there, although the stakes had been pulled out of the ground. The kingdom porch was bent to the ground and the tent was caught in a nearby bush. We gathered everything up and stuffed it in the car, needing to get out of the wind before we could evaluate everything. Neither of us was enjoying Death Valley up to this point – too vast, too hot, too windy – so we bailed and drove east.
We thought we would be able to escape the winds if we kept driving, but they continued well east of Las Vegas. We were in a bit of a jam since our tent was ripped and it was still extremely windy. Fortunately, we had a free housing option in Scottsdale, Arizona, and while this was about a 4-hour drive out of the way since Grand Canyon was next on our list, it seemed like our best option (aside from paying for a hotel room on a Saturday night in Vegas). So, to Scottsdale we headed. Very fortunately for us, after assessing our gear, we found we could patch the fly of the tent (needed a lot of patches, but it seemed to work) and bend the kingdom porch poles back enough to make it stand again. It took us a day to sort through everything, but we ended up with one relaxing day in Scottsdale before driving to the Grand Canyon.