Death Valley Ntnl Park
Im not sure why it never hit me, but the ‘Valley’ that sits at -282 feet below sea level also sits thousands of feet below everything else surrounding it. Just 30 miles out of the valley floor and you are at 3000 ft above sea level, and that applies no matter which direction you go. Death Valley really is just a massive gouge in the earth.
We stayed over night. Shockingly, there is a herd of invisible buffalo who, once every 5 to 10 minutes, completes a lap around the valley floor and barrels past our camping area. This ‘herd’ (aka Wind) woke us numerous times through out the night and truly shook the night around us.
While the drive down into the valley was nothing of great difficulty, and the same about the drive around the floor itself, the climb back out was asking a lot of the van pulling the trailer behind. We ended up crawling up the slope at 12mph for over an hour to get out. While that kept us from overheating, our nerves were shot after the first 500ft of the climb.
