I got back last night from a three and a half day camping trip out to Death Valley, the lowest and—I think—the hottest place in North America. This was my second time there and I absolutely love this place. It's so big and harsh it just makes you realize how small you are. Anyway, I thought I'd post some of my photos:
Badwater salt flats. 282 feet (86 meters) below sea level. No shade anywhere to be found and a vast white, highly reflective surface all around you. It is freaking
hot here.
The path from the road out into the salt flats at Badwater. The white surface you see is not pavement but salt that has been flattened and smoothed by people walking on it.
Dante's View looking down into part of Death Valley. To give you an idea of the scale of the place, look for a thin vertical white line in the lower left of the photo. That line is the path into the salt flats from the previous photo.
Just a little ways away from Badwater is the Devil's Golf Course which is these lumpy salt formations stretching off into the distance. One of the things that's so neat about this place to me is that you can be standing in a place like this, where it's quite hot, and still see snow up in the mountains.
