Death Valley National Park, California (USA)

Badwater Basin #1, Death Valley National Park USA (Landscape, with gallery border)

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The entire place is haunting. I have read that the first people to attempt to get to California by wagon train from the east gave the place its name. As the story goes, they crested the range that enabled a view of the vast valley floor ahead, and someone said "This is surely the valley of death."

It is also said that few, if any, of the weary travelers actually perished in Death Valley proper. Heat can be an issue, with summer highs over 120 degrees F, but water is the real issue, for there is not much of it. Average rainfall in Death Valley is less than two inches per year.

While we were there in the fall of 2015, we saw about ten years' worth of rain. We were told that the month of October that year saw a "thousand-year rain event." it was followed in the spring of 2016 by one of the most notable flower bloom events in recorded history.

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