Aaron's Status

7:00 pm

Once again posting from a plane. I’m 1,135 miles from Boston and we probably have another few hours of travel left. We won’t get home until around 1am, so tomorrow is going to be pretty sketchy.

Death Valley was incredible as always. Everyone seemed to find something to enjoy out there; the wife loves all of the nature, the kid loves climbing on stuff and running around, and I got to exercise my cameras a bit to round out the year.

The trip up to the Racetrack on Monday was long and rough but so fun, and I’m ecstatic that I got to see that eerie place myself. Definitely unique and memorable, but at the same time not my favorite place that we visited.

On Tuesday we slept in a little and then split off with my friend’s daughter and the four of us hiked the Desolation Canyon, which is definitely a hidden gem in Death Valley. If you go, you’re going to want to see Golden Canyon, and you should do that, but that’s the “popular” one.

Desolation Canyon is a bit harder; there are at least three scramble areas that will challenge the uninitiated but our family climbs for fun so they were pretty trivial for us. There are a lot of huge areas of intense green, similar to Artists Palette, and the hike isn’t that long, a bit under 2 miles one way.

After that we drove through 20 Mule Team Canyon, a cool, short one-way loop, and then met up with our friends to check out Devil’s Golf Course, Badwater Basin, and Dante’s View. These were the ones I was really waiting for and are probably cited as the central attractions of the park.

There was massive flooding a while back (unbelievably) and somehow Devil’s Golf Course was actually very white. I’ve never seen it white. The last two times I was there it has been entirely brown but I knew that it was white underneath (it’s salt basically). It was so cool to see it all white.

Badwater Basin was pretty much how I remembered it, it’s still incredible, it’s still popular, and there isn’t much more to say.

Dante’s View was also amazing and lived up to my memory of it. We went at dusk and there was some great light for a little while. It was pretty cold but definitely worth seeing again. We let the sun get behind the mountains and then started the drive back to the hotel.

We all met up for dinner and after that we laid out for a while to look up at the stars. I don’t think the kiddo really appreciated it as much as I thought he would, but it was pretty great for me anyway. You could actually see the Milky Way, which I don’t think I’ve seen since I was a little kid.

I took a couple hundred photos or something and out of those I think I got about four that I actually like. That seems about right but it’s still wild to spend four full days in an incredible place and end up with only four “keepers.” This is partly because my bar is high.

What a great trip overall, spectacular to visit that amazing place again, and such a perfect break from everything going on in “real life.” Now we just have to get back home…