Fortunately, most of the park’s major features can be reached via paved or well-maintained gravel roads. However, heavy rains last year washed out roads at a number of spots around the park. Repairs should be completed by fall 2023, but check with rangers to confirm current conditions. Furnace Creek also is the epicenter of park visitor facilities and accommodations, including the elegant Furnace Creek Inn and the 224- room Furnace Creek Ranch, a casual family- style motel. There’s a general store, gas station and RV campground as well, plus the Borax Museum, offering an excellent pictorial history and artifacts portraying the important role of borax extraction in the Valley’s past. You’d best plan on at least a couple of days to explore the park’s major attractions. Furnace Creek sits roughly in the center of the Valley so we suggest visiting points of interest to the north one day and those to the south the following day. Northbound on Hwy 190 from Furnace Creek, you’ll want to stop at Harmony Borax Works. This was an important mining site from which those famous Twenty Mule Team wagons originated. There is an exhibit at the site that features a pair of the old wagons. Farther along, you can stroll Salt Creek Interpretive Trail, a stretch of boardwalk along a seasonal saltwater creek that reveals some amazing plant life. Pickleweed and desert holly thrive in the salty water. At the junction to Stovepipe Wells you’ll find a sprawling 14-square-mile network of wind- sculpted sand dunes, some rising more than 100 feet, that serve as home to a host of desert wildlife such as kit foxes, coyotes, rabbits and a variety of lizards. You can hike among the dunes (trudge would be a better word) but keep in mind that temperatures on the sand surface can reach almost 200 degrees — even in the winter. So don’t overdo it and take plenty of water. As for points of interest south of Furnace Creek, make a serious effort to get to Zabriskie Point during or shortly after dawn. The early morning view out across multi-colored layers of ancient lakebed, tilted and twisted into weird badlands,
is truly breathtaking. A bit farther south, Dante’s View provides what many consider to be the classic Death Valley panorama, overlooking a broad sweep of salt flats reaching up to 11,049- foot Telescope Peak. Reachable from Hwy 178 south of Furnace Creek, Artist’s Drive is a one-way road that meanders eight miles through magnificent washes and mud hills so named for its palette of reds and yellows (iron oxides) and greens and violets (volcanic minerals) that literally paint the hillsides. Just a few more miles down the road is Badwater Basin, mentioned earlier as the lowest point (-283 ft) in the park, and the entire Western Hemisphere for that matter. If there’s still time for it after you read this article, you should plan to attend the Death Valley Encampment, November 6-11, 2023. Billed as one of America’s great festivals, the Encampment marks the historic 1849 crossing of Death Valley by pioneer gold-seekers bound for Sutter’s Mill, California — and forever remembered as the Forty-Niners. The event features dozens of activities, ranging from guided hikes and four-wheel-drive excursions to chili cook-offs, Western music and cowboy poetry readings. Most activities take place in and around Furnace Creek.
For more information: www.nps.gov/deva 706-786-3200
It’s not too hot for colorful wild flowers.
NATIONAL PARKS TO VISIT IN WINTER
COAST TO COAST MAGAZINE FALL 2023 | 14
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