Death Valley Day 1

I had my first day in Death Valley. I didn’t get there until later in the afternoon, so I went to Furnace Creek Visitors center first to get some information about the park. I found out that they got .85 inches of rain last week so there are still some roads that are closed do to flooding. Hell, in Jacksonville .85 inches is a small drizzle and no one thinks anything about it. After I got some information I drove around for a while. I found artist’s drive which one of the places on my list, so I drove through it. It is a one-way loop with a speed limit of 25 mph. There were so many beautiful scenes to view. The top one is Artist’s Pallet which is a small hill with a bunch of different colors and actually looks like a painter’s pallet. The problem with all of this was that I was there in mid-afternoon and the sunlight was very bright. I went ahead and took pictures knowing that I am here for two weeks and can get back to these places in better light and the pictures will look a lot better. When I left that area, I came across a trail called Golden Canyon. This is a 4-mile trail so I knew that I wouldn’t be walking the whole trail in 92-degree heat. I walked in about a half mile and the canyon was narrow. Not as narrow as Antelope canyons in Arizona but still narrow. The sun was almost directly overhead shining directly down into the canyon which again was not good for photography. The canyon used to have a blacktop road running through it but was converted to a hiking trail and you can still see some of the remnants of the old road. As I said I plan to return at a different time of day to get better light.