A tour to Death Valley National Park

The hottest area on Earth and the driest territory in all of North America, not just the United States, are two records that this national park is breaking. The nearest international airport is in Las Vegas, which is about two hours distant, making it difficult to visit Death Valley. The journey will be rewarded with striking desert scenery, including strollable sand dunes and Artists Drive, a 9-mile paved road with pastel-colored hills. There is also the Racetrack, where the well-known moving pebbles are located. There are numerous campgrounds and hotels inside the park, including The Oasis at Death Valley, if you want to stay there.

The badlands beneath Zabriskie Point are painted in various shades of yellow, ocher, and orange by the golden sun rays of early morning or late afternoon. If not the best view of Death Valley, then certainly one of the best. (Dante's View, though, is a formidable rival. See the third point below.) A short distance southeast of Furnace Creek is Zabriskie Point. In honor of Christian Brevoort Zabriskie, general manager of the Pacific Coast Borax Company in the early 1900s,