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Advice for Death Valley national park?
We plan to check out how the desert is doing after the recent rain. I have never visited Death Valley and I expect the National Park map will point out the highlights. But if you have been to this park, what stood out or was memorable for you? What advice do you have? We have a few days and the park is huge.
Was there anywhere to eat that you liked? We are coming from the West, not the East. Will probably stay a night in Bakersfield before returning home.
Well I'm an animal person, so... You gotta see the pupfish! They're endangered and live in these super crazy desert conditions. Very cool to see them so playful and lively, swimming around in such little water. Also, visit the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refugee if you can (maybe an hour or so away from Death Valley) where you can see the Devils Hole pupfish. They are critically endangered, live exclusively in this spring-fed cave on a sort of shelf, and only a few hundred in population. Very precious!
I also recommend the pupfish! They are sooooo cool. The devil's hole pupfish is older than the hole they live in. You can also get pupfish stickers and patches at Ash Meadows. I know I did.
We went about a year ago. We stayed in a tiny cabin at Panamint Springs, which was fine for us. It was cold out, but the cabin did have a heater. Cell service and WiFi are only available in a few places. We brought a telescope and looked at the stars, but we didn't really know how to find anything with so many stars.
There was bad weather one day (sandstorm) so we drove the other way to Alabama Hills. There's a museum about how they used to make cowboy movies in the area.
Even in good weather, don't underestimate your chances of getting lost, which I managed to do for a couple hours on a hike on badly-marked trails and my wife found quite scary. I don't recommend splitting up. Take a picture of any map you see, I managed to forget the map in the car, and Google Maps won't tell you much.
Well, it can if you prepare. In Death Valley, you should no issue with satellite connectivity - so for one, your gps receiver will work fine, just make sure to download maps beforehand. Hiking apps like AllTrails would be better for this as well.
If you happen to have a recent iPhone, a good backup backup backup plan is that they do come with satellite SOS now, so might be worthwhile to figure out how that works.
Yes, downloading anything is difficult once you get to the park. The national park service does have an app, but you need to download it before you leave.
I did download the area in Google Maps data ahead of time, which is good for driving, but of limited use for hiking. Knowing where you are relative to the nearest road doesn't help all that much. Particularly if the nearest road is down a cliff. Fortunately, that wasn't the way I was going.
So, yeah, I recommend downloading hiking trails with a different app. (And have a paper map, too.)
I'm guessing you're coming from SoCal. I went to Death Valley from SF last summer and stopped by Bodie, a ghost town north of the national park by a few hours. It was super cool and interesting. Probably too out-of-the-way, but there are also other ghost towns in CA that might be easily added on.
If you're going soon then you're timing it better than me. July 4th it was 112F, although interestingly it was hotter in Vegas afterwards at 114.
I'm actually in the Bay Area, but the trip is faster and hotels are cheaper if we take 5 south and then cut across. 395 will be another trip, another time. I want to see Mono Lake and the ghost towns etc.
We got up early and drove all the way there. The drive through Kern canyon is pretty nice, but we did get to Panamint Springs after dark, which was kind of a shame. Driving back, we took two days. Red Rock Canyon state park is a nice place to stop.
This time of year, a lot of stuff in the mountains is closed for the season.
We'll be leaving at the end of a work day.
I'll report how it went
Regarding eating, I recommend bringing food. There are few restaurants and they are pricey for what you get, so we mostly didn't use them. The Panamint Springs restaurant isn't fancy but nice enough after a long day.