DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK
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Artist's Drive is a nine mile loop off of Badwater Road and bordering Badwater Basin. It's a dipping, diving and curving drive through an extra-terrestrial landscape.
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It could be a Martian Landscape. In the distance is Badwater Basin and the Panamint Mountain Range.
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The colors of this area can change rapidly at this time of day, especially at sunset.
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The brilliantly colored and and wildly eroded badlands of Death Valley. Another rather unearthly landscape.
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These are golden-brown mudstone hills riddled with rills and gullies from the occasional, but intense, times when water rushes down the bone-dry slopes.
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One of the prominent features of Zabrieski point with the Panamint Mountain Range in the background.
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One of the prominent features of Zabrieski point with the Panamint Mountain Range in the background.
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Maybe my fvoite area of the Furnace Creek section of Death Valley. Here the setting sun is illuminating the Funeral Mountains east of the dunes.
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The glowing Funeral Mountains
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The primary source of the dunes is the Cottonwood Mountains which lie to the north-northwest. Tiny grains of quartz and feldspar, through erosion make up the sand that in turn make up the dunes. The tallest is 150 feet high.
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One can explore the dunes on foot, but be prepared to empty a lot of sand out of your hiking boots!
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Dusk was certainly the best time to visit the dunes. The western setting sun with its low angle cast a perfect light across the dunes.
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Badwater Basin is crusted over with a variety of salts and at Devil's Golfcourse it is a gnarled crystalline variety. Exceedingly sharp, it looks like a coral reef run amok. These salt pinnacles are the residue of the Valley's last significant lake, which evaporated about 2000 years ago.
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At 282 feet below sea level Badwater Basin is the lowest point in North America. 2 to 4 thousand years ago the basin was a 30 feet deep lake that evaporated and left a 1 to 5 foot layer of salt in it's wake. Today, a small briny pond, four times saltier than the ocean still remains during the winter.
