I was never really interested in going to this place growing up, I spent a lot on the road, with road trips to Vegas ( my mothers favorite place which she always dragged me to as a child and ironically now my favorite place on earth, yes I’m serious!) and I would always hear adult chatter about Death Valley being the hottest place on earth, yuck!. I am not going to lie Instagram gives me inspiration and roadlust (word I made up lol) I saw these white dunes on there that enthralled me, and I have always had love for the desert and things that you don’t really see everyday.  I looked it up and it was only a 4 hour drive and I went on a weekend where all the national parks were celebration 100 years so free entrance to all national parks, what could beat free.99?

We left again at about midnight, this was probably the scariest road trip I have ever been on and literally had an anxiety attack when we almost got to the destination. I was sleeping until about more than halfway, we were to the entrance to the campsite. The road to our campsite was close, I woke up and all I see is pitch black with the car headlights on to illuminate only about 30 feet of dirt road and cacti. It was like a horror movie, the break light indicator kept going off and all you here is “ding ding ding” with no reason whatsoever, there was no service and we were running out of gas, we were in the middle of nowhere and if “hills have eyes” really existed , this would be a perfect way to fish for prey and ambush some clueless tourists….HAHA anyway we ended up turning back because the emptiness of the desert was freaking us out. We waited up until about 6am until the sun came up and made a return to really see where we were going and get sufficient directions to an alternate route.

At about 9am it was very hot at 100 degrees, the high of the day was 118 degrees and we were soon regretting the idea of camping outside, nobody was camping, all campsites were empty. So we decided to get a hotel at Stovepipe Wells, a cute little stop before furnace creek. The rooms were really nice considering it being in the middle of nowhere, it was at the cheapest supposedly due to that weekend being empty at 120 dollars a night. We made a really great decision buying a hotel for the night, it was really hot that day. We hiked all day and needed to shower and have a nice cool room and bed at the end of the day.

Hiking

Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes

 

 

Make sure your legs are in good shape, this is legit a hard hike due to you walking up hill in sand! This was fun and definitely beautiful. Please do not forget to bring water.

 

 

Must see

Badwater Salt Basin, known to be the lowest point of earth. How cool is it to be in the supposed lowest part of earth? You must go to this, it is definitely interesting!