Death Valley is gigantic, wide wide open, and beautiful.  I think I've used those adjectives a lot in these posts but the bits of the West that we've been able to see are just so wild (queue Will Smith).

On our way, we stopped at the "Star Wars Canyon" on the western edge of the valley.  Apparently pilots use this canyon to develop low-flying dogfighting skills (in Will Smith's case, against world-destroying aliens).

Parts of Death Valley look similar to the scrub-and-mountains that we've spent uh at least twenty hours driving through, just much much bigger.  We also put our new Rugged Prius' engine breaking skills to good use.  I had thought that Death Valley was just like a big... valley; mostly flat once you got inside.  It's definitely not.

We decided to camp just one night in Death Valley rather than two so that we could get on to the Grand Canyon a bit earlier.  Also because it's hot.  Fortunately we chose to camp at the Wild Rose Campground, up at 4100 feet -- so it was considerably less hot (in the 70s or 80s in the day, 50s or 60s at night).  Wild Rose is first-come first-camp, so we headed there first when we got in around 3pm.  Unfortunately it was at the end of a windy windy eighteen mile road, so by the time we got to set up camp we didn't feel too much like leaving.  But it's a free site, which is pretty nice.

A note about chicken rice.  We prepared a number of backpacking meals, as well as some ready-made (but refrigeration required) freeze-dried chicken with prepared rice and quinoa.  The chicken-rice is a curry with dehydrated mushrooms and freeze-dried vegetables.  It's not awful, but it's somehow aggressively bland.  We do not look forward to eating it, but eat it we must.

We camped under the Death Valley sky, which was quiet, and dark, and huge.  We'd purposefully chosen our wedding day near a new moon since we knew we'd be in many places with beautiful skies, and Death Valley was the best.  Carrie saw six shooting stars; the milky way was bright against the night.

Our evening was interrupted, though, deep in the night.  First a rustle and then a loud loud braying -- what sounded just near our tent.  Carrie thought that a mountain lion had caught a donkey in the gulch just below our tent and was having its dinner.  Later we figured that it was instead two wild donkeys amorously enjoying a not-so-quiet evening to themselves.

The best time in Death Valley, Carrie has said at least ten times since our visit, is the morning.  It's cooler, true, but the better feature is the morning light.  We got up before sunrise and drove to Zabriskie Point to try to catch it.

This was probably the best part of the whole day, although the remaining hiking was fun, too.  It was also extremely windy up on Zabriskie Point.

After Zabriskie Point, we stopped to make coffee and camping oatmeal and then continued to Badwater Basin, which is the lowest point in America.  Apparently named by a mule driver who stopped there with his team -- he noted that the animals did not want to drink from the water and figured that it was "bad."  A truly majestic story.

We also saw two (live) roadrunners.  Carrie was not driving at the time and so we were able to admire their beauty and so they were allowed to remain alive.

On the way back, we hiked through the Golden Canyon (so named because the rocks are golden-gray, instead of normal-gray like many other Death Valley rocks), and did a bit of off-trail hiking.  A lot of the rocks have wildly supple textures due to erosion.

Before leaving Death Valley we stopped at one of the high (elevation) points, which offered great views of the valley floor -- as well as a sweet lizard.