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Astronomy
Death Valley Vacation
In January of 2003 I took a vacation to Death Valley, California, landing in Las Vegas and picking up a Porsche Boxster S [photo] from Rent-A-Vette. It's about 2h30m from Vegas to Baker, CA, which is the 'entrance' to Death Valley. Yes, the stories you've heard are true -- there's a "whole lot of nothing" between Baker and Death Valley. Personally, I'm into that. The sky out west is nothing like it is here on the East Coast -- it's a whole different, lighter, shade of blue that I found to be incredible.
Death Valley itself was, at the time, rather nice. It wasn't too hot during the day, maybe 80F, and at night it was a pleasant 65-70F -- cold enough to turn up the heat in the Boxster. Driving through the desert at night with some ambient trance music blaring, top down, heat up at 80F, windows up, seeing the night sky above you (since there's no light pollution out there, you can see stars like you wouldn't believe).... it's just incredible.
If you want to go out there, and I highly recommend you do, there's only one hotel/motel there: the Furnace Creek Inn & Ranch Resort. I stayed at the Ranch, which was more like a little village of bungalows than an actual resort. However, the resort is literally a few hundred feet up the road and featured a large fountain in front of it. It was quite posh. The ranch was nice enough, though :) It's a little surprising at first, as you're driving on and on in the middle of nowhere, then you take a curve and boom, the Resort is right in front of you. I had to slam on the brakes at first (I was doing around 90mph; the Boxster handles wonderfully). :)
Anyway, here are some photos I took. Enjoy.
The Drive In
Day Two: Zabriske Point (48 photos)
Day Three: Sunrise at Zabriske Point
Videos of Parump, Furnace Creek Inn Ranch/Resort, Zabriske Point, and the Porsche Boxster S
Select the image to get a larger view.
All images & movies copyright 1996-2009 HMS
Reproduction or distribution expressely forbidden.
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