Gallery: Death Valley, CA - Day 3...

Gallery (60 images): Death Valley, CA - Day 3...

On day three in Death Valley, I visited numerous diverse locations. On the way to Aguereberry Point, I stopped off at the Eureka Mine ruins and also at the Aguereberry Camp ghost "town", although with only a few buildings, I suppose it is too small to really be called a town. What surprised me, is that even though the buildings are visible from the main road leading to Aguereberry Point, and it is only a short drive on a dirt road and 2 minute walk from the parking area, there is actually very little graffiti. One building had one room with its walls filled with graffiti (photo 18 in the gallery), but that is pretty much it. The old house pictured above, actually has virtually none at all, neither on the inside nor the outside. This is really a nice change since I much prefer photographing "pristine" ruins that have not been defaced in more recent times with spray-paint and graffiti!

After photographing the ruins, I headed up to Aguereberry Point and was rewarded with some wonderful cloud shadows and quite clear vistas. The wide panorama in the gallery was a stitch of four shots. Strangely enough, despite the fact that I was up there during the Memorial Day weekend, there was nobody else at the viewpoint! In fact overall, Death Valley was quiet on what I presumed would be a very busy weekend where tourists generally flock to the national parks. I suppose it was late enough in the year already that the heat was keeping people away. Indeed, despite the big thunderstorm the night before with rain and high winds, the nighttime temperatures in Furnace Creek didn't drop below about 35º Celsius.

After enjoying the views at Aguereberry Point, I headed over to the mill ruins at the ghost town of Skidoo (more great clouds there) and then finished off the day at the Stovepipe Wells sand dunes. It seemingly was a very busy day for tourists on the dunes though, since there were tracks and footprints everywhere, despite the fact that previous night's storm had likely erased all the tracks on the dunes from before. The ridges along the highest dunes were flattened down from all the people walking there, which you can easily see in some of the photos...

Link: All galleries from this trip...