One Day in Death Valley National Park

After our successful Joshua Tree National Park road trip, my friend Camilla and I decided to road trip from LA to Death Valley National Park! Camilla said the park was known for being “otherworldly” and it really is. I had very low expectations for some reason, but all the landscapes were very different and interesting. Fun fact, it’s also the largest national park in the contiguous United States!

THINGS TO REMEMBER FOR DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK:

• Download the Google Map for the park since there isn’t service in most of the park
• Make sure you plan to get gas
• There aren’t bathrooms everywhere in the park, so go when you can
• I would only go if it’s 75 degrees or colder (they don’t call it Death Valley for nothing)

Day 1: Saturday, March 16

Camilla picked me up around 7:15am and drove us to Death Valley National Park. It’s about a 4-hour drive from Los Angeles, and there aren’t a ton of gas stations in the park, so we stopped for gas in Ridgecrest, 150 miles in. An hour and a half later, we took a restroom break at the Panamint Springs gas station. There was a little gift shop and a restaurant across the street that I had considered going to, but I had made a bunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the road that were hitting the spot.

Our first destination in the park was the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes. It seemed so random since the dunes just appeared out of nowhere, like someone just dumped a ton of sand into the valley. We walked around for a bit and took some photos. I’ve seen some pretty portraits taken at golden hour, but it was still cool during the day.

Next, we did a short hike, the Golden Canyon Trail to Red Cathedral. Although it’s only around 3 miles, I can see how it could be rough if it’s hot. There was a little shade created by the overhanging rocks, but other than that, you’re exposed to the sun the whole time. It was mostly a sandy trail until we got to Red Cathedral (a massive red rock face), then you kind of had to scramble. It got pretty steep at one part and I just stopped climbing because it was slippery and I didn’t have hiking boots.

Because of all the rain in Southern California this year, there was enough water to turn Badwater Basin into a small lake. At 282 feet below sea level, this is the lowest point in North America. There was a marker on the cliff above the parking lot that showed where sea level is.  This was the most crowded place in the park that we visited, but we were still able to find parking.

The water level had decreased by the time we were there in mid-March, but a few weeks earlier, people had been able to kayak. A lot of people went barefoot in the salt flats, but the mounds of salt were actually pretty sharp and painful to walk on, so we kept our shoes on most of the time.

We did a quick photo stop at Artists Palette. The rocks were all different pastel colors, it was really pretty. You could walk on a trail, but it randomly started raining, so we didn’t stay outside for very long.

The original plan was to be at Zabriskie Point for sunset, but it was cloudy and we were ahead of schedule, so we just went there at 5:30pm. The rocks kind of look like a small mountain range.

We checked into our motel of the trip, the Death Valley Inn in the town of Beatty, Nevada. There weren’t a ton of restaurants for dinner to choose from, as the town is only a few blocks wide. We ended up going to Denny’s, which was located in a casino down the street. Everyone there was super nice, but it smelled like smoke and ultimately I would probably recommend going to Smokin J’s Barbecue.

DAY 2: Sunday, March 17

We woke up and checked out of the motel around 7:30am. There was a cool sign out front, so naturally we took photos.

There are native donkeys in Death Valley and Beatty and on our way out of the motel we saw two just standing on the side of the road. We pulled over and the donkey came right up to the car! It was so funny but also a little scary, but it seems like they are friendly and used to people.

For breakfast, we checked out the Death Valley Nut & Candy Co that had a coffee counter and a Subway inside. This store was so fun! It had pretty much any type of candy or snack you could think of. There were also postcards for Death Valley NP and even the town of Beatty. I grabbed some sour gummies and Camilla got coffee and some fruit.

There are a few park entrance signs, but we stopped at the Death Valley Sign on the Nevada side.  There were barely any other cars out on the road since it was early on Sunday. The clouds were paid actors.

Our last stop was just to see wildflowers. The desert was so lush after all the rain this year. I think it will have a lot more wildflowers later in the spring.

I was pleasantly surprised with Death Valley National Park! There weren’t a whole lot of other things I wanted to do. We were mostly limited by the quality of some of the roads. We weren’t able to go to Darwin Falls since the road was washed away by a flood and Natural Bridge since the road to the trailhead was rocky.

Google Map of everywhere we went in our one day in Joshua Tree National Park:

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