Death Valley – Day 2

Day 2 of my recent trip to Death Valley was a homeward driving-day. The other photographers stayed another day to capture that ever-elusive stunning dawn shot of the Mesquite Dunes. Click on Death Valley – Day 1 to refresh your memory of the first day.

There were beautiful clouds – instead of the almost constant blue skies of California. When I lived in Maryland and a cloud-free day would happen, I thought of California; however, the cloudy days in California do not look like Maryland!

The sand turned a dusky color from the sky reflection.

Despite the dead and dry conditions, there were many green oasis throughout the dunes.

The photographer in the background shows how big the dunes are (and we’re on the low dunes).

A beautiful yellow carpet of flowers on the desert. It is so amazing to see what minimal conditions in which the flowers grow.

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You can see where the rain water flowed by tracing the yellow flower trail.

Rarely do photographs show height well, but this photo of the road from the north into the valley shows a roller-coaster ride down to 282 feet below sea level.

Many of the mountains have beautiful colors, showing the layers developed through time. Several mountains looked like banana splits, with chocolate syrup.

The last view of the dunes on the way out of the park. These dunes are where most of the visitors go, you can see how many tracks are on the dunes. We were a few dunes east of this in the morning.

The long road home.

This post was done away from home, on an iPad instead of a laptop (a challenge) and without wildflower reference books, so may be edited later.