ADVENTURES IN OUR AMERICAN DREAM travel blog

I had a "great" birthday visiting this awesome park today with Betty...

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Map showing the area we visited..

Betty climbed on a rock while Jerry checks the map...:-)

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20- Mule Team Canyon..

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Loved the beautiful Furnace Creek Inn, it was awesome!

We are minus -190 below sea level now...

We loved the cool 64 degrees in January..:-)

We were hoping to see some of these, but no luck..:-)

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We had great sandwiches from Subway for our picnic..

Jerry & Betty enjoying the picnic, we had Cheescake Factory cake too..:-)

Anyone know what sparrow this is? He had a tiny yellow bill...and...

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Cool...

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We drove the Artist Scenic Drive...

The dips in the road made it feel like riding on a...

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We had a clear view of the moon all day..

This area looked like the surface of the moon..:-)

The more we drove, the more colorful the rocks...

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The incredible Artist's Palette...

Last one, view of the mule team from the park website..


I would like to say a big “thank you” to everyone for all my birthday gifts and cards. I had a “perfect” birthday.

This is part one of our trip to visit Death Valley National Park. We picked Betty up around 10:30 in the morning and drove about 120 miles to start our tour of Death Valley. I studied this huge park before our visit and decided which places we would have time to see. You could spend a week in the park and probably not see it all. They do have nice campgrounds that are reasonably priced, we were worried about taking our RV into such a hot place, but it was actually cool for our visit. :-)

Death Valley is a desert valley located in Eastern California. Situated within the Mojave Desert, it is the lowest and driest area in North America, and currently the hottest in the world. We were happy to visit in January while it was in the sixties.

Our first stop was the Furnace Valley Visitor Center, we learned a lot about the park. After the visitor center we had a nice picnic in one of the sunny areas outside. I saw two birds I am still trying to find in my books. It was loaded with birds. We had Subway sandwiches we purchases with one of our gift cards from family. Thanks Ed, Vickie and Sammy!

After our picnic we drove the Artist’s Palette Scenic Drive. Artist's Drive rises up to the top of a deep canyon cut into the Black Mountains. Artist's Palette is on the face of the Black Mountains and is noted for having various colors of rock. These colors are caused by the oxidation of different metals (red, pink and yellow is from iron salts, green is from decomposing tuff-derived mica, and manganese produces the purple). It was a beautiful drive, we enjoyed the views and the dips that made us feel like we were on a roller coaster at times. :-)

I am adding a lot of pictures from this part of our visit to the park, check back later for "part two" from Death Valley National Park.

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