Entering Death Valley

We stayed in Lone Pine, CA last night, which is situated about 45 min west from the edge of the park. Our hotel is approximately 4500 ft in elevation with the southern end of the Sierra Nevada mountains looming over us (first picture).

When you get to the beginning of the park you have come down to approximately 2000 ft in elevation(second picture). Then the road narrowed and became extremely windy as we dropped into Death Valley! You enter Panamint Springs (where we'll be staying tomorrow night and the next) which consists of a 12-room motel, a restaurant, a gas station, and an RV campground. Our goal today was to drive south to Badwater Basin and then go north and south again to Dante's View.

Past Panamint Springs, you now have to go back up and over a little mountain range to the main valley, getting as high as 4900 ft in elevation (third picture). Then you drop back down to 100 feet BELOW sea level in the middle of the park. Whew! My head doesn't know whether to have altitude sickness of not!

You get to Stovepipe Wells next, which is the same idea as Panamint Springs, but a little bigger and nicer. Just past Stovepipe Wells, you reach the Mesquite Sand Dunes that just seem to appear out of no where(fourth picture)! The sand is softer than most of the beaches in Northern California.

After this, we were on to Furnace Creek, the main hub of the park where all the activities are!