My family and I have been to Death Valley about a dozen times. All through
school, we'd pile in the mini van every spring break to escape the Oregon
rains and drive down to Death Valley National Park. We would always have
a great time, no matter what we did there.
I introduced Tricia to Death Valley in the summer of 1995. We were driving
back from Lawrence University, and we planned the trip so it would take
us through, among other places, Death Valley. My parents thought we were
crazy to go there during the summer - after all, the average daytime temperature
during the summer is around 110 degrees. Foolishly, we went anyway. Fortunately,
the two days we were there, it was cool and cloudy (cool being the low
80s). Trish really enjoyed it - we spent two days driving as fast as we
could, seeing as much as we could, and we still didn't get enough. We both
knew we'd have to come back some day.
These Death Valley web pages detail our 1998 Death Valley trip. These webpages
should not necessarily be used as a template for your first trip to Death
Valley. Since most of us had been to Death Valley before, we skipped some
of the "common targets" and checked out things we had never seen before.
In the daily pages, I'll make clear which trips are common first-time tourist
attractions, and which are more esoteric.
