Death Valley in the spring
“Hottest, lowest, driest,” said Janet Fullwood in The Sacramento Bee. That’s the quickest way to describe Death Valley, though it’s a bit like “describing chocolate as brown.” In this legendary slice of California near the Nevada border, just west of Las Vegas, the sun “creeps in like a paintbrush” every morning, illuminating the landscape. Some people are frightened by the dead silence. But visitors can see things that exist nowhere else on the planet—volcanic craters, marble canyons, “dirt tracks leading to ruined mines,” and barren layers of rock 200 feet below sea level, walled in by 11,000-foot-high mountains. Early spring is a good time to visit, when the nights are cool and the days “tolerably warm.” The Furnace Creek Visitor Center is the best place to join an interpretative tour given by a park ranger, and the four-star Furnace Creek Inn is open until mid-May. Cell phones don’t work here, and Internet access is spotty. That leaves you time to think, “and there’s lots to contemplate in Death Valley.
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