Death Valley: Golden Canyon, etc.

Hola. I'm back from my camping trip and I have a ton of photos (surprise!). But I'm narrowing them wayyyyy down and will show them to you in a series of posts over the next week or so. I'll tell you a little about my trip in the captions. I wish I had a more intriguing intro for you, but I'm not an intriguing person.


Saturday I flew into Vegas and my parents came to pick me up. We immediately headed to Furnace Creek to set up camp before it got dark. This was a scene on the drive.


These bushes are all over, but I really like them, so they show up in a lot of my photos.


The next morning we were awaken by lots of birds, mostly some sort of black bird and these doves. They coo like little owls all day long.


This is the other main type of bird--I think this is the female version of the black birds. I could be wrong; I'm not a birdologist.


We got a map from the visitor's center that mentioned several points of interest, so we headed south of our campground to cover a handful of them on Sunday. Our first stop was Golden Canyon, where we hiked the trail. Here are my cute parents! I have several photos of them posing at our various stops.


Wildlife sighting! My mom spotted this lizard, and we ended up seeing several more on this hike.


I just thought this was funny--in trying to catch a photo of him I got one without his head. It reminded me of a popular portrait style where the head and shoulders are cut out of a photo of an engagement picture (or other portrait). Maybe you know what I'm talking about, maybe you're thinking I'm insane.




I took this for the stripes, but there are also some crystal (like calcium?) deposits here. I don't remember why--my mom was reading the material provided with the hike, but I didn't catch every word.






I tried to include people in some of my photos to give some size perspective.




The photo on the right shows the Red Cathedral at the end of the hike. It wasn't all that red, actually, but I'm sure it is at sunset.

Okay, stay tuned for more deserty goodness! Have any of you been to Death Valley? What places did you visit there?