In January David's soccer team played in the
Sin City Shootout in Las Vegas. The trip was a good opportunity to visit with family, tour a national park, and hang out in fabulous Las Vegas. Paul tagged along for this trip and managed to get some roller coaster credits. Win-win!
We arrived on a Thursday night and took the next day (before the soccer tournament started) to visit
Death Valley National Park. Paul had visited the park 9 years ago, but it was David's first trip to the lowest point in North America and the hottest point on Earth. Luckily, since we were visiting in January, it wasn't blazing hot. We were treated to a really unusually rainy and foggy day in the desert. It's neat to see things from this perspective, but David felt like he missed out on the full desert experience.
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| Driving to Death Valley there was low clouds and fog. |
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| Foggy! |
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| Overcast skies all day, and not much traffic. |
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| I wonder if this dog has a permit... |
Death Valley is a really huge park (the largest in the US outside of Alaska), and we were only able to see a small portion of it in the eight hours or so we had to spend. In total, the park is over 5,000 square miles, a little smaller than Connecticut. We started from the south and visited Badwater, the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level. From there we drove north and hiked up a canyon to Natural Bridge. Next was the incredibly cool and odd Devil's Golf Course before we checked into the main visitor center at Furnace Creek. Finally, we took a ranger's advice and drove through Mustard Canyon, hiked along an estuary at Salt Creek and closed out the day hiking the Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes. Not too shabby for one day!
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| Obligatory national park sign picture! |
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| It's a neat landscape. |
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| Entering the valley. |
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| All the rain created a few small salty lakes. |
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| Who said the desert doesn't have water? It was really shallow though. |
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| Lowest point in North America! A bucket list experience. |
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| Marching out to the Badwater Basin...very flat and salty. The mountains ahead are over 10,000 feet high. |
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| Badwater Basin jumping pic! |
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| -282 foot selfie! |
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| Natural Bridge |
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| Paul has the exact same picture from back when he lasted visited in 2008. |
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| The Devil's Golf Course. Basically, very rocky and eroded salt flats. One of our favorite sites in Death Valley. |
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| So many dirt roads. Our rental car got a bit dusty. |
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| Salt Creek Estuary. Home to a variety of endangered fish that we didn't see. |
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| Mesquite Sand Dunes in a misty rain. |
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| The dune landscapes are beautiful. |
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| Sand, sand, everywhere. |
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| Not quite as impressive as Great Sand Dunes NP, but pretty close! |
After knocking a few pounds of sand out of our shoes, we left Death Valley behind and drove back to Las Vegas. We stayed with David's Uncle John and Aunt Leah for the trip. Thanks for being such great hosts!
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| Uncle John and... |
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| Aunt Leah! :) |
Overall, soccer was a bit of a bust...the team went 1-4-1. But David scored the most goals for his team so he was happy about that. After soccer, there were lots of tacos, drinks and nights out on the town.
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| Night out on the strip with David's cousin Josh and his girlfriend Yami. |
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| New York? |
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| There were lots of Chinese Lunar New Year decorations in the hotels. |
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| Here we are, enjoying the casino-hopping! |
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| The Venetian is pretty cool on the inside. |
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| Bye Las Vegas! We'll see you again sometime soon! |
