Hey Actifitters,
We started early yesterday from Las Vegas, headed to our first national park for this trip: Death Valley. This was a great day with lots of short to medium hikes. It's only a teaser cause I think this trip will require several dedicated posts.
Even in Death Valley, the weather is crazy this year: we arrived under the rain and with a very unusual mild temperature.
After confirming our tentative plan with the rangers at the Furnace Creek visitors center, we started driving towards the Artist drive.
Snow capped peaks in Death Valley? That's not exactly what I was expecting but that was a great surprise obviously.
With the overcast weather, the ranger recommended the short Artist palette hike, because the colors would pop. He was right, it was really cool to see all these colors.
Next up on the schedule was Golden Canyon. We were a bit careless. It was supposed to be short and without sun. So, no water, no protection from the sun. Only the weather changed very fast and it started to get really hot. But the scenery was absolutely worth it. We went up to Red Cathedral and turned back.
For something a bit different, we drove next to Rhyolite, a nearby ghost town. Like many places around here, it grew very quickly during the Gold rush, and went down as quickly, or even quicker. It was interesting but I'm not sure it's worth it if you are short on time.
The tiny weird museum was very cool though, almost in a creepy kind of way. We met a cyclist at the entrance.
This depiction of the last supper is for sure the weirdest I've ever seen!
When driving back, we stopped at one of the parks sign. Can you see the menacing sky behind? It started raining again, and we even saw lots of lightning.
But when we arrived to the next trailhead, Mosaic Canyon, the rain had stopped. Even if we could still hear thunder nearby, we started the hike.
We even went along that ridge for a bit. Very narrow, you have to be careful with your stepping.
We were getting close to sunset time, so we quickly went to the Mesquite Flat sand dunes, again recommended by the ranger for the sunset.
We found a good dune to sit and enjoy the entire sunset.
We stayed for a while to enjoy the post sunset colors.
And finally it was time to get to our hotel for the night. That was a full day to get our hiking trip going. No long hikes, but plenty of shorter ones, and more walking in between. I hope this is enough steps to give some challenge to the other Macfit final four participants.
As always, thanks for stopping by and see you tomorrow for day 2 in Death Valley.
[//]:# (!pinmapple 36.46182 lat -116.86668 long d3scr)
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