Mosaic Canyon & Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes

The hike to Mosaic Canyon is supposed to be cool because of the conglomerate walls on one side and the marble on the other side. I think this might be more exciting if you don't hike a lot, but...I didn't think it was that exciting. So do with that what you will. 

Here's a shot of some of the conglomerate...

And here's some of the marble parts--these were polished pretty smooth in a few spots and the kids had a ton of fun sliding down them! 

More conglomerate I guess...

So overall I don't think I would recommend that hike. It isn't super exciting and there are some parts where you have to climb around stuff quite a bit (probably 3 parts where you're full-on climbing) and then the end is just a dryfall and not very exciting and it smelled SO bad, so clearly a lot of people had taken advantage of the relative privacy. I wished we'd hiked by Artist's Palette instead but I had not yet gone to the visitor's center & bought my book of secret hikes so I didn't know about it. 

After Mosaic Canyon we went to the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes to pretend that we were on Tatooine! Lots of Star Wars filming sites around Death Valley and it was fun to try to figure out camera angles. 

The boys spent a long time jumping off sand dunes here, Abigail and Juliet (and maybe my dad and Neil, not sure? I'd hiked way ahead with the boys) took a nap. And I took pictures of the playa. 

Pretty gorgeous, just need that binary sunset! 

 

Zabriskie Point and Artist’s Palette

Okay--this is one thing I've got to go back to Death Valley to see again. Despite trying twice, I just did not time things correctly for Artist's Drive and Artist's Palette. We were trying to hit it at sunset (along with everyone else in the world) and oh my gosh, I could NOT TAKE all the Instagrammers climbing around and doing stuff like staging lightsaber duels on top of the cliffs. I was seriously so darn annoyed. 

Which means my photos were either reaaaaally far away: 


Or taken when it was almost completely dark and most of the people had climbed down. Grrr. 

Artist's Drive was so beautiful and I read about a hike later that I really wish we'd done there (instead of going to Mosaic Canyon which was kind of boring). Another time. 

We managed to miss sunset on Artist's Drive but caught a pretty spectacular one the second time we drove through it. Honestly one of the best sunsets I've ever seen, I think we pulled over three separate times because it was just utterly spectacular. Probably looked really good from the salt flats...

In passing I will note that one thing that made this trip tricky was that it was December and we were close-ish to the edge of the time zone, and so it was getting completely dark every night by 5:30, which is not my favorite for things like cooking dinner while camping. It also made the afternoons feel kind of cramped because I usually wanted to try to see sunset from a specific point so I was antsy about that. 

Anyway. Zabriskie Point! This is where we watched the last sunset of 2024. 

I kept swiveling around trying to take in the panoramic views and watch everything change by the minute as the light changed. 

A little stressful when you're a maximizer trying to suck all the beauty out and not miss anything! 

Another sunset spot that we definitely left too early but everyone was hungry and grumpy and so when it was just me and Isaac up there by ourselves, we were like okay fine maybe we will come down. 

(these pics are out of order, whoops) 

Sooooo basically I just need to go back to Death Valley and watch ALL THE SUNSETS. 

 

Golden Canyon

One of the things I was looking forward to most in Death Valley was hiking through Golden Canyon, and it did not disappoint! 

This section is called the Red Cathedral and is well worth the detour (the top photo is taken from the trail near the top of the Cathedral). 

I loved seeing the dramatic coloring all around us--it made me wonder whether the rest of the Earth would look like this without vegetation (probably not, since Death Valley also has volcanic gases and salt coloring things). 

We did this trail as a loop starting at the Golden Canyon trailhead and then coming back through Gower Gulch. I wanted to do the spur out to Zabriskie Point, but the kids decided they would rather drive there later. But we did do the Red Cathedral spur! 

Looking back towards Badwater Basin. 

Most of the trail is very easy and relatively flat (walking up through a wash) but there are a few parts that are more intense, like the climb to Red Cathedral.

And the hike up from the bottom of the wash over the ridge down towards Gower Gulch...that one was STEEP. And very windy. 

There were some really gorgeous sections of rock that were dyed by volcanic gases. 

Such a pretty hike and one that we really enjoyed! This was probably my favorite thing we saw in Death Valley. 

And of course, pretty fun to try to match up the Star Wars filming locations with the terrain around us. 

Really beautiful and a great way to spend the morning!