On our way back to North Dakota, Jeff and I decided to take a little side trip and see Death Valley. I was expecting to see a lot more desert, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that Death Valley is surrounded by mountains. It was beautiful. We packed a lot of sight seeing into one day. We started from the west entrance and drove up to the top of one mountain. Here we are at the top of Dantes View. It was even pretty chilly up there. Boy, what a view it is. From there we headed down to Badwater Basin, which is below sea level. We could watch the temperature keep rising the lower we went down in elevation. I walked out to the basin, however Jeff knew that we would be doing a lot more hiking later in the day, so he opted to stay back at the visitor viewpoint. The floor was all dry and cracked. It was actually kind of pretty. After Badwater Basin, we headed out to the sand dunes with a quick stop at Furnace Creek Visitor Center. We had to stop for an ice cream. I wanted to walk way out onto the Dunes and wait for the sun to set, but we had other stops to make, so we didn't get to spend much time there. Mosaic Canyon was the next stop on our trek. Here we hiked back into the canyon a couple of miles. It was a great hike and I wish that we could have gone farther, but it was getting dark, so it was time to leave. Some day I would like to return to Death Valley and spend some more time exploring and photographing.
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