Activities
See also: Places of interest in the Death Valley areaSightseeing is available by personal automobile, four-wheel drive, bicycle, mountain bike (on established roadways only), and hiking. Riding through the park on motorcycle is also a popular pastime. State Route 190, the Badwater Road, the Scotty's Castle Road, and paved roads to Dante's View and Wildrose provide access to the major scenic viewpoints and historic points of interest. More than 350 miles (560 km) of unpaved and four-wheel-drive roads provide access to wilderness hiking, camping, and historical sites. All vehicles must be licensed and street legal. There are hiking trails of varying lengths and difficulties, but most backcountry areas are accessible only by cross-country hiking. There are literally thousands of hiking possibilities. The normal season for visiting the park is from October 15 to May 15, because of summer extremes in temperature. A costumed living history tour of the historic Death Valley Scotty's Castle is conducted for a fee.
There are nine designated campgrounds within the park, and overnight backcountry camping permits are available at the Visitor Center. Xanterra Parks & Resorts owns and operates a private resort, the Furnace Creek Inn and Ranch Resort, which comprises two separate and distinct hotels: the Furnace Creek Inn is a four-star historic hotel, and the Furnace Creek Ranch is a three-star ranch-style property reminiscent of the mining and prospecting days. Xanterra also operates the Stovepipe Wells Village motel. The Furnace Creek Inn and Ranch and the Stovepipe Wells Village are the only inns located inside Death Valley proper. There are a few motels near various entrances to the park, in Shoshone, Death Valley Junction, Beatty, Nevada, and Panamint Springs.
The visitor center is located in the Furnace Creek resort area on State Route 190. A 12-minute introductory slide program is shown every 30 minutes. During the winter season—November through April—rangers offer interpretive tours and a wide variety of walks, talks, and slide presentations about Death Valley cultural and natural history. The visitor center has displays dealing with the park's geology, climate, wildlife and natural history. There are also specific sections dealing with the human history and pioneer experience. The Death Valley Natural History Association maintains a bookstore specifically geared to the natural and cultural history of the park.
Death Valley National Park is a popular location for stargazing as it has one of the darkest night skies in the United States. Despite Death Valley's remote location, its air quality and night visibility are threatened by civilization. In particular, light pollution is introduced by nearby Las Vegas. The darkest skies are, in general, located in the northwest of the park.
Read more about this topic: Death Valley National Park
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“That is the real pivot of all bourgeois consciousness in all countries: fear and hate of the instinctive, intuitional, procreative body in man or woman. But of course this fear and hate had to take on a righteous appearance, so it became moral, said that the instincts, intuitions and all the activities of the procreative body were evil, and promised a reward for their suppression. That is the great clue to bourgeois psychology: the reward business.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)