Death Valley National Park

Death Valley National Park is undoubtedly one of the most mysterious and at the same time beautiful places on the planet Earth.

It is a land of contrasts: a narrow long plain, volcanic craters suspiciously resembling a lunar landscape, sheer cliffs forming deep mysterious canyons and huge dunes. From Dante Peak Pass, which is located at an altitude of 2 kilometers above sea level, you can see the entire Valley of Death, in all its eerie charm.

Its terrible name, which, in fact, does not correspond to reality, Death Valley received in 1849: a party of gold diggers roamed in the desert for several weeks with almost no water and food, two members of the expedition died, and now, when the exhausted travelers still got out of this stone trap, one of the women turned back and said with relief: “Goodbye, Death Valley!”. The name stuck.

On the territory of the national park there is something to see: the ghost towns of Riolight and Lidfield, the Grape Vine Mountains, Titus Canyon and the Golden Canyon, the Devil's Golf Course and Lake Bad Water - the lowest place in the entire North American continent and at the same time the hottest place on Earth. This is the largest salt lake in the world, but the water in it appears once or twice a year, and then if there are heavy rains. And most often the surface of the lake is covered with a solid crust of salt, with bizarre growths up to 70 centimeters high.

Another natural phenomenon on the territory of Death Valley is Raistrac Playa, a dry lake at the bottom of which there are real races between stone cobblestones, the weight of which sometimes reaches half a ton. In an unknown way, the stones change their position, spontaneously move, leaving behind a furrow similar to a trace from a snake crawling through the sand. Throughout the XX century, scientists are trying to find a solution to this amazing phenomenon, but there is no clear answer so far.