This place gets a 4.5 out of 5 rating from TripAdvisor.com. I personally give it a full 5!
It looks like chocolate swirl ice cream to me! Anyone for a hot fudge sundae?
Turns out that we made it in just under the wire because the National Park Service is closing access to this area until March or April of 2015. Again, the Lord blesses us!
Zabriskie Point is named after the vice-president and general manager of the old Pacific Coast Borax Company. From here you can see these richly colored mudstone hills and canyons left when Furnace Creek lake dried up five million years ago. Later sculpted by erosion - water does come to Death Valley but usually in downpours and what we in Texas call gully-washers - the beauty of what we see in this vast graben (the geological term for a sunken fragment of the Earth's crust) cannot be explained by merely using the word "erosion." Neither does the phrase, "200-square-mile salt pan surrounded by mountains" or "forbidding desert conditions" give even the slightest clue to the exquisite beauty of Death Valley.
I so wish we were younger and could scramble around the formations! They say that there are fossilized footprints of ancient mastodons, camels, horses, carnivores and birds in what was lake shore mud! The only way to see them is to take a hike. These ol' hips and knees aren't up to the task anymore. Take heed my young family - it's now or never!
Telescope Peak is the highest point in the park at 11,049 feet. It is only fifteen miles from that peak to Badwater Basin - the lowest point in the United States. The vertical drop within that fifteen miles is twice the depth of the Grand Canyon! You can imagine the drive from the normal world down to Badwater Basin gives endless views of amazing landscapes. Check your brakes, boys, and get out the cameras!
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