Badwater Basin | Essential places to visit in Death Valley

Badwater Basin: A reminder that the sun sure is nuclear

Getting to Badwater Basin—now, that was some drive. We had the GPS set to take us there and back, I’d warned Ben numerous times that whenever we stop we should turn the engine off, and all of us were pretty tired by this point.

Just as we passed a few warning signs heading onto the long, unending road into the heart of it, the GPS started going crazy—it kept trying to have us make a u-turn right in the middle of nowhere, off-road, to head into non-existence. It was both hilarious and terrifying in equal measure.

We pulled in just in time for the start of sunset. Sadly we had to press on to catch the sand dunes before it got dark, so we weren’t able to wander down to the most famous spot in all its salty hexagonal evaporations.

Instead, we made up for that in other marvels, such as shadow photography and the fact that the temperature was still around 100 degrees, despite the time of day. It’s a remarkable place and I wish we’d had longer to explore.

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Rowena HarrisMarch 10, 2019

Travel

Badwater Basin | Essential places to visit in Death Valley

Badwater Basin: A reminder that the sun sure is nuclear

Getting to Badwater Basin—now, that was some drive. We had the GPS set to take us there and back, I’d warned Ben numerous times that whenever we stop we should turn the engine off, and all of us were pretty tired by this point.

We pulled in just in time for the start of sunset. Sadly we had to press on to catch the sand dunes before it got dark, so we weren’t able to wander down to the most famous spot in all its salty hexagonal evaporations.