How long?
2 days, 1 night

How many miles?
540 miles / 870 km (without the overnight hike; that one is ~15 miles one-way)

How?
Road trip + wilderness / backcountry camping
Map required, compass optional (i.e. well maintained & sign-posted trail — anyway you just have to follow the river)

Maps?
Satnav / phone for driving or Washington / Seattle / Olympic Peninsula road map
National Geographic Trails Illustrated Map #216 (for hiking and driving on the Olympic Peninsula)

Itinerary:
Seattle Airport-> Seattle (optional) -> Hurricane Ridge -> Ruby Beach -> Graves Creek trailhead -> Kalaloch -> Seattle Airport

Leg 1 (Seattle Airport-> Seattle (optional) -> Hurricane Ridge -> Ruby Beach -> Graves Creek trailhead):

My flight was scheduled to land at SEA at midnight, but we came in about an hour late. My plan had been to take a short drive north from the airport and cruise through Seattle at night. The drive from the airport to Hurricane Ridge takes about 3 hours and I wanted to be there in time for sunrise, which was at around 5.30am (late July). The drive up to Seattle is about 20-30min. So while there was still plenty of time to drive up, there was not much time / point to actually drive leisurely through Seattle, so I just drove to Harbor Avenue in West Seattle and enjoyed the skyline, with the iconic Space Needle (built for the 1962 World Fair), from there. Now if you’ve already been to Seattle or don’t care much about cities, then skip this detour and head straight fir the Olympic Peninsula — you will be able to catch one or two hours’ sleep in your car after you arrive. I had slept on the flight over from NYC and while my body clock complained just a bit, this was enough to keep me going and so I happily went for the detour to Seattle.

After that it is an easy drive over to Hurricane Ridge (take the interstate 5 south, then follow routes 16, 3, 104 and finally 101). There were occasional rain showers and plenty of fog as I drove to the national park, so you should really be able to be super alert in the car. I was a bit concerned that there was not going to be much of a sunrise in this sorry weather, but as I drove up Hurricane Ridge road (N.B.: if you do not have an interagency park pass, don’t forget to pay your fee at the machine at the park entrance) with twilight in full swing, the clouds started to break (or rather, I was driving up out of the low clouds) and I started to get a glimpse now and again of the mountains looming before me, with extra mood provided by the moon.

Finally up on Hurricane Ridge, there was fog initially, but it lifted and there were stunning views to be had. The clouds were all lying in the surrounding valleys and you really got the impression of towering over a sea of clouds, with only the high mountains piercing through. There is a short trail you can do from the parking lot (half a mile or so in total length) which takes you to an aptly named Sunrise Point, but with great views all along the trail (see the magical fog-shrouded landscape that presented itself to me on this trail as captured by the feature image for this post).

I regretted not taking my tripod with me as there would have been excellent material for capturing time-lapses of the slow moving clouds in the valley. Anyway there were great pictures to be taken. On the meadows next to the visitor center, a couple of deer came up from the valley and out into the sun, munching happily on the grass.

If you brought picnic, this would make for a great picnic spot. I had not (or rather had eaten my sandwich on the flight) and so was getting a bit hungry. The visitor center would have been convenient but it only opens at 9am, so after having had my fill of the views, I drove down to Port Angeles and had a good heart breakfast at a place called Cafe Garden.

After this, I headed back up to the visitor center in Port Angeles to get my backcountry permit for the night. If you want to do one of the quota limited hikes (e.g. Upper Royal Basin), then it might be best to first get the permit as soon as they open, as there will be a queue of people. I had decided to hike into the Enchanted Valley where there are no limits, so satisfied my hunger first, then went to the backcountry office, after the early queue had cleared.

From Port Angeles I headed for Ruby Beach – a solid 1h45min / 2h drive. Shi Shi Beach might be more impressive (I don’t know as I did not go), but is is a detour and requires you to hike a few miles for none of which I had time, as the hike to Enchanted Valley is a whopping 15 miles long… But if you plan to stay in a guest house somewhere, or do your overnight hike to Shi Shi Beach (my original plan, but reports of serious mosquito trouble and ~100-200 people camping out there on a summer weekend, I decided against this), then by all means do this.

Ruby Beach is conveniently situated along the route from Port Angeles to the Quinault rain forest area, and you only have to hike a quarter mile from the parking lot to the beach. While popular, you will still be awestruck by how wild this beach looks, with Abbey Island towering over it. Ideally the tide is low when you get there (I had of course planned this to perfection…) and you can hike a mile or so up north along the beach. If you’re more flexible with time, hike up the full 3 miles or so to the mouth of the Hoh river and then back down (but really only do this if you have studied the tide chart before setting off as you otherwise risk having your way back getting cut off!). Also, apart from the barnacles, clams, snails, crabs etc that will abound in the tide pools and rock face, keep a look out to the ocean for sea otters and whales. I saw one sea otter hunting just south of Abbey Island. For this it is a good idea to bring a solid pair of binoculars with you as the otters will be quite a bit out at sea.

I still had good 5-6h hike before me, so only went up for a mile or so, then headed back, got into my car and drove to Lake Quinault and the Graves Creek trailhead.

Hike (Enchanted Valley):

See my detailed post on this hike here. It’s a nice, but long hike. You will be walking mostly through old growth forest, going up the east fork of the river Quinault. The namesake valley is truly deserving of its name and in spring you should be almost guaranteed to see bears here (good to know if you want to avoid bear encounters!). However if you just want to get a maximum of scenery in, then consider trying to get a permit for the Upper Royal Basin, which I hear should be nothing less than spectacular. If you do this, then you might have to adjust the route for this road trip, as your trailhead would be in a quite different part of the park.

Leg 2 (Graves Creek trailhead -> Kalaloch -> Seattle Airport):

If you follow my route, then your day starts with another 5-6h hike: back the way from Enchanted Valley to Graves Creek trailhead. By the time you are back at the car it is lunch time, and there is only so much you can still hope to do, given that you have to catch a flight from the Seattle-Tacoma airport in the evening (if you only got the weekend as I did).

Now the sea otters had quite gotten to me the previous day, so I decided to head back up to a beach to see if I could spot some more. I stopped at Kalaloch, as there was a gazebo up above the beach from which it as much easier to have a good view then down from sea level. Sure enough there were 2 groups of a dozen otters each hunting near the Kalaloch rocks.

After also getting some late lunch here, I got back to my car and set off for the long drive back to the airport. If the weather is clear then Mount Rainier will loom up spectacularly along the highway at times, so enjoy the drive even if the traffic on a Sunday late afternoon / evening might be bad at times (as it was in my case).

Final notes:

A great little trip, but really a weekend does the park no justice. I did not get to see Shi Shi Beach or hike up in the mountains proper. So I will be back for sure and stay longer than just 2 days, 1 night. But still, considering how charged my weekend was and how much I got to see, it’s difficult to see how to cram in more into such a short time.

Data files (click on the link, then download whatever format you prefer from the gpsies website):

Leg 1 (Seattle, Hurrican Ridge, Ruby Beach, Quinault area): http://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=wotoposopswojapn
Leg 2 (Quinault area, Kalaloch, Seattle): http://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=lwkreedupfxfbyjw
Complete Route: http://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=nzhdhjrbuhayitcq

How long?
2 nights, 2 days

How many miles?
~1,000-1,100 miles

How?
Driving
Phone / GPS recommended; for the backpacking part a map and compass are required

Maps?
National Geographic Trails Illustrated Map #239

Itinerary:
Denver Airport -> Mount Rushmore NM, SD -> Devil’s Tower NM, WY -> Badlands NP, SD -> Minuteman Missile NHS, SD -> Denver Airport
N.B.: There are airports closer by, but they are much more expensive to fly to. Feel free to change the starting and ending point — it’s a long drive up from Denver!

Leg 1: Denver Airport -> Mount Rushmore NM, SD -> Devil’s Tower NM, WY -> Badlands NP, SD

So it’s kind of difficult to find a reasonably priced flight to South Dakota. Hence Denver, a major US hub airport, is your best bet. The only problem: it’s a solid 6h drive away from where you want to get to. Anyway if you come from the East Coast, you can take a Friday evening flight, be in Denver at around midnight or so, then drive up and be at Mount Rushmore just after sunrise (unless you do this in winter). This makes for a long drive through the night. Be sure to get some shut-eye on the flight or you are putting yourself in serious risk of causing a sleep-drive accident. With this disclaimer out of the way, I king of like driving on empty country highways at night. If the skies are clear, and there is no moon out, you should make a few stops along the way and gaze at the sky. That’s exactly what I did and it was amazing. At 3am in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming, the skies are amazingly dark. Also when I did this trip (May 2016) there was a cool Saturn and Mars constellation up in the sky. Mars was super big and bright and it was quite a show. A few such stargazing stops help to break up the long drive and shake out some of that fatigue.

The advantage of that long drive through the solitary night: you will be at Mount Rushmore at around 6am. The visitor center, cafe and gift shop will still be closed, but that also means that the parking lot is free (otherwise it’s $8 or so, I believe). Further, I was the only one at the memorial this early in the morning: it was brilliant. It was a nice, crisp sunny morning and doing the short hike that loops around at the base of the morning was a quiet, pleasant affair. I took my time, enjoyed the scenery (the Black Hills really are gorgeous; next time I go, I sure plan to spend more time there and also visit Custer State Park), then as soon as the cafe opened, I went in and had a good hearty breakfast. The waiter also showed me where the original cafe, the one that is featured in North By Northwest (a favourite film of mine and prime reason for wishing to visit Mount Rushmore), had stood and that they in fact had to reshoot the cafe scene in the studio back in LA as the film they shot over here was damaged during the shipment to the West Coast.

After you had breakfast, head back to your car: there’s still plenty of driving to do for the day. Next up is another iconic film location (this time Spielberg, not Hitchcock; Strange Encounters of the Third Kind): Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. It’s roughly a 2h to 2 1/2h drive to get there from Mount Rushmore.

Even though you know is going to be waiting for you, seeing that cylindrical monolith of a rock jutting out into the landscape is just breathtaking. It’s a really surreal and bizarre natural feature. Turns out it is not fully understood how this rock came into being. Most commonly it is believed that molten rock was pressed through the sedimentary rock beds (hence those weird vertical columns that run around the face of the tower) and then the much more solid tower emerged over the years as the surrounding sediment was carried away by the Belle Fourche river. However it could also be a volcanic plug and there are a few other theories as to how the tower came into existence. Certainly the most poetic explanation is the old Lakota tribe legend. This story has a bunch of girls being chased by giant bears. They run, but then stop and pray to the Great Spirit to be saved. This Great Spirit then raises the earth around them and the girls are safe from the bears. The latter try to climb atop, but they fail to do so and their claws leave deep scratches on the sides of the hill — the vertical columns that you can still see today.

There’s two nice circular hikes around the tower; a short on and a long one. I did the short one and it was quite pleasant. Don’t forget to scan the sides of the mountain for climbers — this will put the scale of the thing into perspective.

When you are done: back to the car — more driving awaits. After this you want to drive out to Badlands National Park — this is where you’ll spend the night. It’s an almost 3h drive to get there. You’ll drive through a lot of empty countryside, but you’ll also have to go through Rapid City and a little town called Wall in South Dakota.

The main attraction in Wall, SD, is a shop: the Wall Drug Store. It used to be a small drug store with very little business back in the 1930s, until the owner had the great idea to put up adverts for free ice water on the highway that lead to the then new Mount Rushmore monument. Since then the store has become hugely successful and nowadays it is a huge mall, way too big for such a small town as Wall. Anyway they still serve free ice water, but other than that it really is just a gigantic tourist shopping mall. I stopped there out of curiosity, but feel free to just skip this. I appreciated the large silos next to the railway more than the Wall Drug Store to be honest. Anyway, if you haven’t had lunch yet, the town is a good bet to get some food.

Anyway, keep going and eventually you’ll get to Badlands National Park. Now the more spectacular entrance to the park is from the south: that way you really appreciate what the Badlands really are (and why Wall is called Wall): a huge, impassable rise of rock in the landscape; really a very long wall. Since these lands were so bad to travel through, they earned their name. Anyway, this trip does not enter from that direction, but the next day, you’ll exit that way and will appreciate this view.

Either way, when you stop at the first viewpoint, you will be blown away by the scenery: wild rocks as far as the eye can see and with wild colours (though beige and red dominate). You’ll feel as if you were on a different planet and a strange one at that.

By now it should be late afternoon, so unless you plan to stay in an hotel / motel / BnB in Wall or other nearby town, you should be starting to get ready to hike out. Much of the hiking is cross country and you do not need to get a permit in advance. It is advised to get one from the ranger station (on the other side of the park that you enter from). By the time I would have made it to there, they would have closed and the ranger at the Pinnacles entrance told me to just fill out the backcountry register at the trailhead. So that’s what I did. Since hiking is cross country, you will need a good topological map and a compass. The latter is not really required depending on how deep into the badlands you venture. I simply hiked out from the Conata picnic area trailhead and went southwest along the badlands. So to the south there was open & flat prairie, while to my north the badlands rose steeply — difficult to get lost. I hiked out for 2-3 miles, then cut into a little valley that lead into the badlands (this part is called Deer Haven). I then hiked up the ravines and found a good spot on top of a grassy area. However getting up (and the next day down) the steep sides of the badlands is iffy and potentially dangerous. If it rains or looks like it might be raining the next day, don’t do it — it’ll probably be just one slippery mess.

The skies in Badlands NP are famously dark, so make sure to get up in the middle of the night to gaze at the sky. Other than that you night will be quite and peaceful. I was woken up in the morning by the howls of a coyote. Quite eerily beautiful.

Leg 2: Badlands NP, SD -> Minuteman Missile NHS, SD -> Denver Airport

After you had breakfast, pack up your tent, hike back to your car. There’s plenty of deer and bighorn sheep in the park, so keep your eyes out for them. As I came down from my perch high up in Deer Haven, a bighorn sheep just made its ascent of a rock a hundred yards west of me. We both were surprised to be eyeing each other and it was a bit of an uneasy stand-off (those big horns sure look as if they can hurt you pretty badly). In the end the bighorn just kept staring at me as I continued with my descent, then ignored me once I was far enough away from it.

Take your time to leisurely drive through the park, stopping at the viewpoints and taking it all in. It’s a really impressive park, so make the most of it. Go for another short hike (e.g. the Door or the Window Trails near the main visitor center) if you feel like it.

Just a few miles north of the park sits a newly built visitor center for the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. There you can get free tickets for a tour of the command center, as well as directions to the rocket silos which you can visit on a self-guided tour (both the command center and the silo are a few miles to drive west of the visitor center to get to). The Minuteman Missiles were part of the cold-war nuclear deterrent. It’s not much to see, but quite interesting to visit. It’s all a bit scary when you think that they could have launched the nuclear holocaust from here.

Once you are done, drive back south, through the park, towards Interior, SD. Be sure to stop as you head south to appreciate the wall that is the Badlands as you drive south on highway 377, then west on highway 44. Finally, make your way back to Denver. It’ll be another long, 6h drive.

It’s a lot of driving for a 2 day trip, but it’s all true American Wild West landscapes. And you’ll get to see so much on this trip, it’s well worth the drive. If you’ve got a few extra days, be sure to include stops to Wind Cave NP, Jewel Cave, NM, Custer State Park etc — there is so much more to explore in this corner of the US. There’s also a lot if Native American heritage and history here, not least the Ghost Dance movement and the massacre at Wounded Knee, so it was a bit of a shame I did not have more time. I really only realised how much there was to explore in this part of the world once I was out there, so really should have made a long 3-4 day weekend of it or maybe even a week.

Data files (click on the link, then download whatever format you prefer from the gpsies website):

Leg 1 (Denver, Mt. Rushmore, Devil’s Tower, Badlands): http://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=mrlcsydftzyufvis
Leg 2 (Badlands, Minute Man Missile NHS, Denver): http://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=jdudywwmcbzuuojcComplete Route: http://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=fdjsufuwtpncrhfe

How long?
2 days, 1 night (though to be fair you have to spend a first half night driving up from Las Vegas…)

How many miles?
540 miles / 870 km (of which ~18 miles are hiking not driving)

How?
Road trip + short wilderness backpacking trip
Map required for driving optional for hiking, compass optional (i.e. you can clearly see where you have to hike to in Panamint Valley)

Maps?
National Geographic Trails Illustrated Map #221

Itinerary:
Las Vegas -> Dante’s View -> Zabriskie Point -> Badwater Basin -> Artist’s Palette -> Panamint Valley -> Father Crowley Point -> Owens Lake -> Rhyolite -> Las Vegas

Leg 1: Las Vegas -> Dante’s View -> Zabrisikie Point -> Badwater Basin -> Artist’s Palette -> Panamint Valley

You want to go to Death Valley to seek solitude? Well, the best airport to get there is Las Vegas, so you’ll have first to escape from the weird concentration of human life and folly that is Las Vegas. Now, I had never been to Sin City, so I was looking forward to seeing all those kitschy hotels-cum-casinos that I only knew from films. Once you got your rental car, you can either speed out of Las Vegas on interstate 15 or you drive leisurely (even at night there seems to be a lot of traffic) along the Vegas Strip before heading onto route 95. I had arrived at 11pm and did not plan to be in Death Valley before 5 or 6am, so I had plenty of time and did the latter.

Now if you arrive like me at 11pm or midnight, you have plenty of time to drive up to Death Valley. I caught a bit of sleep on the flight over from NYC, but still, your internal clock will be a bit upset and you will get tired behind the wheel. So you can either drive to a motel along the way or, if you are a cheapskate like me, you can head to the Amargosa Valley rest area at the junction of routes 95 and 373. From Las Vegas it will take you about an hour and a half or so to drive up to here and it will be just over an hour from here to Dante’s View, where you want to be for sunrise. So you will be able to take a nap for a couple of hours in your car (or motel if you went with that option). Hell, at the rest area there’s even a weird Alien / Area 51 store which runs some kind of a truckers’ brothel on the side. The truckers that came out of there looked like you can spend a good few hours in there too! Anyway I also stopped on the way up from Vegas at a superstore to buy a few gallons of water and some food for the entire trip, so you should also calculate some time to do that.

Now, depending on what time of the year you do this trip, you want to leave between 4 and 5am from the Amargosa Valley rest area so as to arrive on top of Dante’s View for sunrise or shortly thereafter. If you don’t have an America The Beautiful multi agency pass, don’t forget to stop at the park entrance to pay your fee at the machine. Dante’s View is the best place to start your trip in Death Valley: you get a full (on clear days) overview of the entire valley from north to south. Badwater Basin lies pretty much straight ahead at your feet and you can clearly see the expanse of the salt flats. Telescope Peak (the highest point in the park) is just opposite across the valley. As the sun rises, the valley slowly catches its rays and lights up. You can hike for a bit along the ridge — a great way to stretch your legs after the drive up here.

Once you filled up on the georgeous view, get back in the car and take the short drive down the mountain and to Zabriskie Point. If you’ve seen Antonioni’s film you probably want to strip naked and make love with someone, anyone, but it’s not a great idea: you’ll probably get arrested. Zabriskie Point is probably THE most iconic scenery of Death Valley. Most people will just walk up the viewpoint from the car park and snap a few pictures (like the feature image of this post), but I highly recommend you take a short hike (or do the full loop; about 6-7 miles) in the badlands. You’ll get up close to Manly Peak and be quite on your own. Considering how much other stuff I wanted to cram into the day, I only did a short 2 miles loop rather than the full hike.

Next up: drive to Badwater Basin, passing through Furnace Creek, where you can get some food, drinks or gas if you are in for any of these. At Furnace Creek, take a left turn onto Badwater Road and from here it’s a magnificent drive down to Badwater Basin. If you do this in late winter and there was a lot of rain in the weeks / months prior, you can get lucky and witness a superbloom: the valley just turns yellow with wild flowers. This was the case in March 2016 and it was stunning!

When you get to Badwater Basin, you will probably struggle a bit to find a parking spot (I just parked a bit further down the road), but do get out of your car and walk out onto the salt flats — you will feel as if on a different planet. If you do this trip in summer, do not attempt this without sunscreen, sunglasses, a hat and plenty of water or you’ll be in trouble in no time. Even in early March it was pretty hot out here and blindingly bright as the salt reflects most of the sunlight.

When you have had enough, walk back to your car, and drive back in direction of Furnace Creek. However before you get all the way up there, be sure to take a right turn signposted for Artist’s Palette. It a nice drive through rolling badlands, and mid-way through you get to the namesake badlands with all their splendid colours. You can take a short walk / hike here too if you are still good in time.

After this, drive back up to the junction with route 190 at Furnace Creek. Go left now, driving north past Furnace Creek, then west through Stovepipe Wells. Backcountry permits are optional in Death Valley and you can backpack pretty much anywhere (though no camping on the lower Death Valley floor), but it is a very good idea to get one in case of emergency (the rangers will know where you planned to go). You can get this at either the visitor center at Furnace Creek or the ranger station at Stovepipe Wells.

Continue along route 190, crossing the Panamint range into Panamint Valley. In the valley there will be a road going left / south to Trona and beyond. Before this, a little under 2 miles up the road, is a small dirt road going off to your right. Take this road. If you want a longer hike (what I did), then just park your car on the side of this dirt road and set off for the Dunes at the end of the valley (7-8 miles one-way). If you want a shorter hike, then continue the dirt road until its end, and from there it’s a shorter 3 mile hike to the dunes.

Overnight hike: Panamint Dunes

My original plan had been to drive up to Ubuhebe Crater, then take the long dirt road to the Racetrack and spend the night there. However there were several reasons why I did not do this: i) it is a long drive up there and a longer drive on the dirt road down to the Racetrack, ii) you cannot camp next to the road anywhere and you should camp on a small campground south of the Racetrack (or you need to park you car along the road and hike out for at least a mile), iii) I was on my own in a small economy car, so if I had gotten more than one puncture along the dirt road or stuck in loose sand (a real risk from what I’ve read) I would have been in serious trouble. So if there are a few of you, you have a high-clearance 4×4 car and you have a bit more time at your disposal, then I would still urge you to do this: the sliding rocks of the Racetrack are another key Death Valley sight.

My back up plan was to hike to the Panamint Dunes: an easy hike: flat and impossible to get lost as you see where you need to go all the way. That said, it’s not the most exciting hike, since the scenery never really changes. You are also quite exposed to the elements, so if the sun is fierce or there is a sandstorm in Panamint Valley — don’t do it. Panamint Valley is also a training area for the local airforce bases, so if you are seeking solitude, the noise of jets flying overhead might not be what you are looking for. That said, watching their crazy weaponised ballet in the sky is pretty spectacular in itself.

Now I have to admit, camping at the foot of the Panamint Dunes was not the brightest idea I’ve ever had. It was quite windy (I think it is always windy in Panamint Valley), and even though I pitched my tent somewhat sheltered by a big bush, I did not spend a quiet night and feared constantly that my tent would be blown away. Also the sand gets blown up to the norther end of the valley (that’s why the dunes are there in the first place!) and it will get blown under your tent’s raincover and through your mosquito net. In fact the mosquito net will filter the sand so that all your stuff (including yourself) gets covered in very fine sand.

The upshot was, that in the morning I was up early, and had the Panamint Dunes all to myself. There were a few storm clouds from the windy night that were just beginning to disperse and when the sunlight hit the dunes, it was just magical.

I packed up my tent and stuff before setting out into the dunes and I left my backpack near a bush so that I would not have to carry all that stuff up onto the dunes. If you do this, take good note of your surroundings as finding you backpack later can be much harder than you think.

Once you have had enough running up and down the dunes (they are really high, so be aware of this if you’ve got vertigo), get your backpack and hike back out the way you came.

Leg 2: Panamint Valley -> Father Crowley Point -> Owens Lake -> Rhyolite -> Las Vegas

OK so day 2 in the desert. You will probably spend most of the morning in the dunes and hiking back to the car (unless you did the short option). You will also need to get back to Vegas for your flight back in the evening. So not that much time left, but still plenty enough to see a few things. First off, overlooking the valley you just spent the night in is Father Crawley Point. To get there, simply continue along route 190 which snakes uphill out of the valley. The first exit on your right, sign-posted Father Crowley Point,  is the one you want to take. You can either leave your car at the main parking lot, or drive the final mile on the dirt track. I hiked, but it’s up to you. The turn-around point of the dirt road makes for quite a fine view over Panamint Valley with good views over the valley floor and Telescope Peak on the far end.

After this, get back into your car and continue along 190. You will reach a plateau and, if you have never seen them before, watch out for the Joshua trees on either side of the road. As you continue along 190, get ready to be blown away by the sight of the eastern Sierra Nevada as the road bends downhill into Owens Valley. If you are like me, you will have to stop several times along the road, get out of the car and just scream in excitement at this sight.

Finally, as the road reaches the valley you will come to a junction: route 190 veers left / southeast to Olancha whereas straight ahead (northeast) starts route 136. At this junction is a handy little parking lot, where you can park your car and walk a bit towards Owens Lake. There is also an informative panel with a bit of history about Owens Lake. Now this is a mostly dry lake, but there is still some water. The reason is simple: you are standing in front of the single biggest source of dust pollution in California and the state decided it was a good idea to divert some water here to keep the worst of it at bay. Owens Lake used to hold much more water in the past but fell victim to the Californians thirst for water and much of the river feeding it was diverted into the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Flanked by the glorious Sierra Nevada mountains, the place does not look that bad, but sure enough when the wind picks up you can see the sand flying around. In fact you can see it being kicked up on the picture above. It’s a lovely spot for a picnic and the road down to Olancha is pure American road trip scenery, so enjoy the view.

Finally get back into your car and head back towards Death Valley: after all you need to get back to Las Vegas. You can take the longer way and after you go past the Mesquite Sand Dunes, take a left, and then immediately a right to get onto the Daylight Pass Road. It is a glorious exit from Death Valley, so do stop at the top for a farewell view over the valley.

Continue all the way to Rhyolite, Nevada. This is a ghost town now. It was founded as recently as 1905 after a gold rush exploded in the area. The population reached about 5,000 at its peak, but by 1920 the town had been abandoned — the local mine had been hopelessly operating at a loss and in fact closed in 1911. Most of the buildings are in ruins now, but some like the bottle house have been restored. It is a charming little place and it does not take too long to explore it.

Finally, head back to Vegas. If you need food or gas, Beatty, NV, is nearby so do stop there. Sunset will be in full swing as you drive down Amargosa Valley towards Las Vegas. It is an awesome sight, so enjoy the drive.

All in all this is a great, power-charged trip. Probably best to do it on a long weekend or even over 4 days. This gives you more time to explore other areas of this desert park. For overnight hikes, there are plenty of options. I decided for convenience on the simple hike to Panamint Dunes, but if dunes and sand are not your thing, you can easily plan a more exciting route for that bit.

Data files (click on the links, then download whatever format you prefer from the gpsies site):

Leg 1: http://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=znfeagoqcnradnah
Overnight hike: http://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=yephwbvssvxmlqes
Leg 2: http://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=ctmseslrvqkwvnjh
Complete Trip (road + hiking routes together): http://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=hauyjffkbzirvxnm