We woke up to a clear, blue sky with neither cloud nor tree to be seen. We were, we learned, at sea level.
After breakfast and a bit of educational reading we set off to explore the Furnace Creek area. We stopped briefly at the sand dunes and decided we would come back tomorrow at sunset.
Next we came upon the ruins of the Harmony Borax Works. Here, in the late 1800s, cotton ball borate ore was scraped off the valley floor by Chinese laborers and purified into borax. It the summer, work was suspended because it wasn't possible to get the water cool enough to crystallize the borax. No surprise there, I suppose.
The borax was purified on site so only the purified borax needed to be transported more than 60 miles to the rail station in Mojave. That transporting was accomplished by huge wagons pulled by teams of twenty mules. Yep, Twenty Mule Team Borax.
After only five years of operation the owner went bankrupt and activity ceased here forever.
After a stop at the Furnace Creek ranger station we came to Zabriskie Point with its otherworldly landscape and thoughtfully placed bench.
After Zabriskie point we headed for Dante's View. While on the way we took a little detour through Twenty Mule Team Canyon — an intimate drive on a one-way gravel road through a strange, pallid landscape.
Next came the long climb to Dante's View, 5,000 feet above the valley floor.
From here there's no where to go but down and back, but once back at Furnace Creek it's possible to head out again in the direction of Badwater, the lowest point in the United States. Can you see the sign 282 feet up the canyon wall?
Here's a better view of it.
Water falls as rain in the mountains and then, a million or so years later, emerges from the ground filled with salts. In that sense it's "bad". Nothing grows here.
We headed back from Badwater, zipping right past the Devil's Golf Course, so as to drive through Artist's Drive before sunset. Artist's Drive is another one-way gravel road, with a turnoff and parking at a spot called "Artist's Palette". I was not the only photographer there.
And, in the light of the setting sun, it was truly lovely.
As darkness fell we headed back to Stovepipe Wells and our home away from home feeling we had done pretty well for our first day in Death Valley.
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