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Photos of Golden Canyon, Uebehe Crater and The Racetrack
The Racetrack in Death Valley National Park
It seems that foreign tourists know more about America’s national parks than Americans because almost every national park has more tourists from another country than people from here. This seems to hold true and account for the few Californians who visit Death Valley National Park. The guide who drove us to The Racetrack in his old Toyota without air conditioning gave us the low down about foreign visitors. He claims foreign tourists usually start in Las Vegas, do the loop to the Grand Canyon, then Death Valley and on up to Yosemite, stopping in Los Angeles and topping off the vacation in San Francisco.
Sacramento is not on the list for that loop. People also look at me funny when I try to explain it gets almost as hot in Death Valley as it does in Sacramento. I mean, come on, people, our temperatures have hovered at 115 for weeks at a time during the summer in Sacramento. OK, it’s not death-defining heat like 128 but hot is HOT.
Coming to Death Valley has made me wish that I had paid more attention in school to geology. This natural wonder formed by seismic forces separating and thrusting the Black Mountains apart from the Panamint Mountains, creating a valley floor. Nearby to Furnace Creek, we have the Golden Canyon, which used to have a road running through it until it got washed out; then further up past Stovepipe Wells, huge mounds of sand dunes.
Even further, in another part of Death Valley National Park, past the Joshua trees and wildflowers at 5,000 feet in elevation is The Racetrack. Until recently, nobody knew what moved the giant rocks during the night, only that they moved, leaving long trails behind them. The working theory now is ice crystals form under the rocks, which reduce the friction on the surface, so when the wind blows, they glide across the dry lake bed.
Check out my video of The Racetrack
Below are photos by Elizabeth Weintraub of these Death Valley attractions, which I hope you will enjoy enough to visit in person yourself.
The Racetrack Grandstand at Death Valley National Park
Layers thrust upward in Golden Canyon, Death Valley
Uebehe crator at Death Valley National Park
Triple peaks in Golden Canyon, Death Valley
Angel fish rock in Golden Canyon, Death Valley
Death Valley Photos from Mosaic Canyon and Badwater Basin
Mosaic breccia embedded in marble
You can’t go to Death Valley without a hike in Mosaic Canyon. There is no way to properly explain the texture, layers, colors or number of spice colors such as cinnamon, cardamon, nutmeg, allspice and cloves inherent in the rock formations; it’s a cycle of erosions in Death Valley — best viewed in person, second by photographs. Geology facts that long ago escaped your brain such as the 3 types of rocks: igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic suddenly make sense. What I didn’t recall was that sedimentary limestone morphs into marble when compressed for a long time under pressure, over hundreds of thousands of years or millions, take your pick.
A vacation in Death Valley can bring your life into perspective. Well, apart from feeling small, puny and insignificant, it can also reawaken your spirit and energy. We visited Mosaic Canyon and Badwater Basin to shoot amazing photos I hope you’ll enjoy as much as we sweated to obtain proof of our journey.
Below are photographs shot in Mosaic Canyon and Badwater Basin in Death Valley, California, by Elizabeth Weintraub.
Walls of marble in Mosaic Canyon, Death Valley
Cycles of erosion in Mosaic Canyon, Death Valley, CA
Stalagmites on exterior in Mosaic Canyon, Death Valley, CA
Elizabeth Weintraub at Badwater Basin, Death Valley, CA
Badwater Basin in March 2015, Death Valley
Photos from 20 Mule Team Canyon, Death Valley
Zabriskie Point, Death Valley, California
The first and only time I visited Death Valley was in the mid-1980s for a Thanksgiving campfire dinner with my soon-to-be 3rd husband and a bunch of his weirdo alternative-religious zealots. These were guys who one day decided some other guy who once sat in the cubicle next to them was a guru, and they were all waiting for the spaceship to arrive, or something like that. Camping in the desert for Thanksgiving sounded like a normal activity to them, and I was hauled along.
My girlfriend Margie was horrified at the thought of me going to Death Valley with this troop of misfits. Sleeping on the ground was not a notion that either of us held as a romantic and fun time. I had never in my life gone hiking, either, I should mention. Hiking, as I came to discover, was a completely foreign concept. Margie decided that I needed to be prepared for anything horrible that could happen and somehow manage to survive. So, she gave me a going-away-present consisting of a bottle of blackberry brandy and a bottle of her prescription Xanax, best hangover medicine ever.
I recall, vaguely, roasting Cornish game hens over an open fire, so we must have plopped down in somewhere inside Death Valley National Park because the fire-ring was already there. The rest of the trip is a hazy memory except for the following morning when everybody jumped out of their tents and declared we were going for a walk.
WHAT! To WHERE? I moaned. There is nothing here except for flat sand for miles. A few rocks and dead bushes. Why would anybody walk anywhere? What? You want to crawl up those rocks? Whhhhhyyyyyy??? I grumbled and complained as I stumbled along in my flip-flops. We were hiking, I suppose, but I didn’t realize there was a name for this actual activity.
Fast forward to today when I’m hanging out the car window and snapping photos with my cellphone because I can’t wait to dig through the crap in the trunk to find my digital camera. Everywhere I look, magnificent rock creations jutting from the ground, displaying layers upon layers of sediment, clay, and various types of rocks, the remains of an ancient lakebed. My eyes pop in wonder.
Today we’re hiking at Badwater Basin. Yesterday, we cruised through the 20 Mule Team Canyon, which of course is reminiscent of the Borax commercials, although there seems to be a question about whether mule teams actually traversed that terrain. Below are a few more photos for your enjoyment. The quality tomorrow will improve when I upload photos from my digital camera; these were shot with my iPhone 6Plus:
Giant Toes from Gullywashing
Elizabeth Weintraub at Zabriskie Point, Death Valley
Striking hills in 20 Mule Team Canyon
Adam Weintraub at Zabriskie Point, Death Valley
The road through 20 Mule Team Canyon
Las Vegas is a Gateway to Death Valley from Sacramento
Las Vegas skyline from Southwest Airlines
Other than the slow loading time of a hotel’s WiFi, working away from home is really not much different from working at my home office. Today, I am in Las Vegas, staring at two huge twin vertical steel structures that are going upward with no end in sight, with pieces of steel rebar unfinished at the top. They sort of look like the old World Trade Center, which is kinda spooky because the backdrop is the McCarran airport, and from our hotel at Mandalay Bay I can watch and, unfortunately hear, the planes take off and land.
This is just a stopping spot on the way to Death Valley. I don’t much care for Las Vegas. I’ve come here for one reason or another at least a few dozen times. It seemed much more glamorous and exciting when I was younger in the 1970s than it does 40 years later. I was married here once, and that guy is long dead. It wasn’t a real wedding anyway because when we got home we discovered he wasn’t yet divorced. And it was just an impulsive thing at the time. He was the one who dragged me kicking and screaming to the courthouse.
Wine tower storage at Aureole at Mandalay Bay
I saw two young kids standing outside the wedding chapel on Las Vegas Boulevard with another young woman. She was shooting a photo of the lucky couple with her cellphone. They were dressed in black, he in black suit, black shirt and black tie, and she wore a floor-length beaded black gown, and looked like they had just tied the knot. They possessed a giddy glow about them. But what kind of fun is that? Standing on a street corner while a friend shoots your wedding photo with her cellphone?
Still, passed by the slot machines slotting and dinging, and made our way around the Blackjack tables without any urge to sit down and kiss our money goodbye. Besides, they take tokens, and that’s just too much work to figure out where to get them and cart them around. There is no fun in pushing buttons, either. The thrill was throwing down that arm.
Mandalay Bay Casino
Everything seems to be an impression of days gone by. They still play up and promote Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, and even the rock-and-roll bands play somebody else’s music. None of it is real. That’s what made the old Las Vegas, Las Vegas, though. There was enough real stuff to go around, and now it’s gone.
Our housesitters just checked in via text to say all is well at home in Sacramento. Today we leave this one-horse town, headed for Death Valley.
Photos: Elizabeth Weintraub
