Death Valley Day Trip

On December 16th I drove to Barstow to the train station where I picked up 3 girls who were living in the USA , studying, all the way from Russia! Kate (kind of the leader for the group) found me on Couchsurfing a month or so in advance and that's how we got connected. I think we were all a little nervous but we soon warmed up to each other and after a bathroom break, we all got in my zippy car and headed out to Death Valley for the day.

Our first stop was the Mill Ruins. The girls had a list of places they wanted to get to all in one day so we did our best not to stay too long in any one spot.

The moment we got out of the car, it was quite windy and we almost got blown off our feet! Our next stop after the Mill Ruins was Badwater Basin - a popular spot - lowest point in North America. 

Driving to our next spot...

We had lunch and spent awhile getting all the way out to the end of the path to take a bunch of fun pictures.

Some more fun photos, taking selfies out here really was great because you have a lot of neat looking backdrops.

Devil's Golf Course was quite the site to see. It looked like everything was dusted with snow but really it wasn't. The rocks are very sharp here and a fall on them could be devastating so we did our best to walk very carefully.

My face when Kate asked me to walk out in the rocky areas to get some pictures.

Artist's Palette was beautiful - I am not sure how Tony and I have never stopped here before.

Trying to beat the sunset to head to the next stop! The sky was so so blue out here - I've missed that.

  

Made it to Zabriskie Point! This area looked fun but we didn't get a lot of time. I'm not sure if there's a little hike here or not but we just took in the scenic views and got some more pictures this time.

We didn't make it to the sand dunes unfortunately, well, we did try. I pulled in to the parking lot and the girls walked out a little ways to try and see what it was like but there's nothing like being there during the daylight.

We drove all the way back to Ridgecrest (which felt like it took forever!), got gas, went to Walmart and back to the house where they stayed a night with us before we went to Joshua Tree the next day.