Death Valley, CA - Days 1 & 2
May 22 & 23, 2015
After driving up from Joshua Tree National Park and securing a campsite, there wasn't much time other than to watch sunset at Zabriskie Point (photos 1-10) on the first day in Death Valley. On the second day, I drove the Titus Canyon road (11-42), a rough gravel one-way road leading into Death Valley from Nevada. A fairly close encounter with a large rattlesnake (14) happended early in the day, although the photo was actually taken from the safety of my vehicle. Along the way, you come across some mining ruins, the ghost town of Leadfield (19-34). The canyon starts to narrow (35-37) and eventually you get to the tightest part of Titus Canyon, seen in photo 42. Note that my GPS watch was not particularly accurate in some parts of Titus Canyon due to the narrow view of the sky, so some geotags will likely be a bit off too.
Late in the day, I decided to head over to the sand dunes near Stovepipe Wells, called the Mesquite Dunes, and wandered out to an area far away from the normal spot where most tourists hike in. Here, I managed to photograph some pristine dunes (46-58), utterly devoid of distracting footprints. The skies started looking very ominuous late in the evening and indeed, once I was nearly back at my car (59) I could see a wall of sand coming my way. I hurried back to my campsite in Furnace Creek, beating the huge sandstorm (photo 60) back by maybe 10 minutes. When it hit, it was quite violant and many people were chasing after their poorly secured tents that evening. Thunder, lightning, moments of pelting rain and lots of wind and blowing sand was in store for that evening!
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