Having never been to any sort of desert, we decided to incorporate Death Valley into our northern California trip.   Our brief visit luckily (in our opinion) coincided with the hot season nearly falling on the centennial  anniversary of the hottest recorded temperature in the world (June 10, 1913 – 134 F). While driving around the park we excitedly watched the temperature climb in the dash thermometer, eventually topping at 127 degrees.  Getting out of the car for short walks was breathtaking.  With such dry air you never feel like you are sweating until you get back into AC  at which point you are suddenly drenched.

Another of our motivations was to visit the lowest point in the US (-232 fasl) the day before we attempted to climb to the highest point in the contiguous US.  Death Valley is a dramatic location with beautiful scenery. Many of the vistas we stopped at are frequently used in movies.  In addition to  Death Valley, two of the towns we stayed in, Bishop and Lone Pine, were popular in old westerns.  It was neat to realize some of the desert scenes in Star Wars were filmed in Death Valley while Muir Woods outside San Francisco was the setting for the Ewok scenes in The Return of the Jedi.

Death Valley was truly inhospitable, dramatic, scenic, and captivating.