Here is the beginning of the trip to Death Valley, we were camped in a campground just across the street from this sign. It shows that were were 214 feet below sea level. the campground was actually just a gravel parking lot with bathrooms scattered around the lot.
I think it said they could hold 750 campers and I think it probably could but it would have been crowded.

This Here is the lowest golf course in the USA and maybe the world a minus 214 ft below sea level. Since the air is so dense down here when you hit the golf ball it only goes about 50 ft so pars are usually 15 or 20 per hole!!! A good 9 hole game is 150. Of course we walk a lot slower down here because we have to push the air out of the way since it is so thick!!

I saw a guy jump off a rock and it took him 2 minutes before he landed on the ground!! 

Birds usually just walk around on the ground instead of flying as they can get wherever they are going faster if they walk. 

Here is the price of fuel when we arrived and it went up by another .08 cents a couple days later. Since it is the only station for many miles you might as well figure on paying the price if you drive a lot of miles within the park. we drove over 300 miles by the time we left the park so it was a good thing we kept things fueled up. It is over 30 miles outside the park to the nearest fuel.

Here we are at Badwater basin, the sign says 282 ft below sea level but it is now 284 ft as the floor of the valley continues to shift down with the mountains around pushing up.

The Devils golf course!! All of the mounds are actually mounds of salt not dirt, they are covered with sand from the wind depositing it on top of the salt all the time. This area will sometimes get flooded with  the rains in the summer, then the salt builds up over time.

These are some of the rock crystals on the badwater basin area. They form patterns on the ground.

Here is a view of the valley floor. The white you see is salt as there is no water here at the present time. They usually get the most rain in july/aug when they have Monsoon type of rain storms. At the present time they have only measured .96 inch of rain since July 1st of 2011 at Furnace Creek area. They have had floods before when it rains hard enough to collect on the canyon walls and builds up and runs down thru the washes. It creates massive quantities of water coming down into the valley.

This is a pic of our GPS unit showing 0 ft of elevation and we were way up on the side of

The canyon.

Here is the sign showing all the temperature extremes for Death Valley. But it is a Dry Heat. Death Valley is officially the hottest place on earth. The temps during the summer will reach 120 air temp, but the ground temps are much hotter as the heat reflects off the ground, they can be as high as 200 degrees!!! 

These are some of the rock crystals on the badwater basin area. They form patterns on the ground.

The ranger pointed out one rock he called profile rock, can you tell who this looks like?

The pic does not do it justice as standing there we could tell exactly who it looked like.

At the bottom of this page I will list the likeness on the rock, so you can wait to see it or scroll down now, sorry no prizes awarded for guessing correctly! I will give you a hint, he was a very well liked President of the US.

The following are very unique formations, very similar to Badlands in other states. 

some of the nice coloring in the hills and mountains surrounding the valley.

Ok here is the answer to the rock formation above. it is Ronald Reagan. No you dont win anything for guessing correctly, just pass go and go directly to park place!!! at least you dont have to go to jail!! or land on something with lots of hotels!!