With a work trip scheduled to St. George Utah, we decided to take full advantage of the proximately to Great Basin National Park (#34), a N.P. established after (sigh) we visited the Big 5 in Utah. St. George Utah is beautiful and growing... with plenty of trails, views of snowcapped Mountains and mild winter weather, perhaps it's a future retirement destination - ha... retirement.
After flying in to Las Vegas and driving two hours to St. George Utah, we proceeded north to Baker Nevada. The drive was beautiful, surrounded by rolling hills, snowy foot hills and mountain sunset colored sky's. Arriving at our Airbnb it was pitch black. We knew that Great Basin was an International Dark-Sky park that offered amazing stargazing, but we didn't know that we'd needed to turn our phone flashlights on to make our way from the car to the house! But the night sky was amazing! So many stars that we weren't quite sure where to look, but it was a balmy 19 degrees so we decided to move along and continue our gaze of the night sky in Death Valley.
The next day we headed to the park to collect our stamp, purchase our sticker and see what the visitor center had to offer.
Educational Moment
We learned that N.P. is literally a great basin that was once a warm salt water sea! About 95% of the state of Nevada is in the Great Basin. The term “basin and range” comes from the multitude of north-south mountain ranges, fault lines and valleys or “basins” in Utah and Nevada.
Looking at at map and then driving north to south you can actually see that they are longitudinally stacked one after
another. It was actually pretty cool to think about what this area looked like millions of years ago!
And just like that, we were on the road to California. To be fair there was one hike we would have liked to have done but the road was closed due to snow, so yep... just like that we were headed to sunny and 70 degree weather!
Death Valley, 198 feet below sea level felt like another world, eerily so that the salt flats often look like water, there's not a tree in sight, and yet snowcapped mountains scatter the skyline. We were not sure what to expect, but were pleasantly surprised how diverse the park was. Lined by mountains, filled with a variety of different colored rocks, craters and canyons, sand dunes and salt flats, Death Valley National Park (#35) exceeded expectations.
We were also fortunate to experience Death Valley during the Dark Sky Festival! We were able to peak through 10+ telescopes, ask questions, look at galaxies, comets, nebulas and planets. It was so very cool to see. Jupiter and its moons were so close that you could make out the colors and its moons, Orion's Belt, the Andromeda Galaxy and of course our own galaxy the Milky Way. Afterwards we moved over to the Harmony Borax Works to listen to a ranger presentation on the dark sky and have volunteers help us set up and capture amazing the dark sky full of stars.
Until next time, pack it in and pack it out.
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