Getting as Low as it Goes in Death Valley National Park, California
If you're drawn to destinations with official designations such as the "largest", "lowest", "hottest", and "driest", then Death Valley National Park is your kind of place. It's the largest park in the continental USA (3.3 million acres), and the lowest elevation in North America is at Badwater Basin, 282 feet below sea level. Only the Sahara Desert gets hotter than the 134 degrees recorded in Death Valley in 1913, and some years less than two inches of rain falls on the park’s parched land. It is these very extremes that make Death Valley National Park also the "quietest," "strangest," and "rarest" place in the country, even if the latter is just opinion.
Death Valley National Park is the hottest, driest, lowest, and possibly the lonliest National Park in America. Sure there are tourists at the hotspots, but a minute away and you can find all the solace you want, especially in the summer!. The beautiful and foreboding landscapes of Death Valley National Park are too numerous to mention, so a night or so at Furnace Creek Ranch will definitely make your exploring more enjoyable. And always bring a lot of water.
There is no unequivocal answer to the mystery of the “Racetrack” in Death Valley National Park. Several theories have been proposed as to how the rocks of this dry lake bed move and shift directions (for example, some combination of wind and slippery ground), but no one knows for sure how it occurs. The fact is that the rocks here do move without human intervention and they leave behind trails to prove it. For a visitor with an intrepid mind and a camera, you can get your own photographs of this unsolved mystery. The “Racetrack” is 32 miles from the Grapevine Visitor Center and 27 of those miles are on a rough dirt road, so bring your SUV or 4x4. At the end of the road is the playa (a dry lake bed). Get out there on foot with camera in hand and photograph the sliding rocks, while they are still an enigma.
If you're drawn to destinations with official designations such as the "largest", "lowest", "hottest", and "driest", then Death Valley National Park is your kind of place. It's the largest park in the continental USA (3.3 million acres), and the lowest elevation in North America is at Badwater Basin, 282 feet below sea level. Only the Sahara Desert gets hotter than the 134 degrees recorded in Death Valley in 1913, and some years less than two inches of rain falls on the park’s parched land. It is these very extremes that make Death Valley National Park also the "quietest," "strangest," and "rarest" place in the country, even if the latter is just opinion.
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