In December 2004 we stopped in Death Valley for three days before going on to Las Vegas to visit our dear friends Helen and Jerry.  We entered the national park at Stovepipe Wells and immediately encountered the sand dunes.

Everywhere you turn the vistas change into amazing spectacles.  December was a perfect month to visit, with mild days and cool nights.  You don't want to visit in the summer because it can get to 126 degrees.  Ouch!  That's just too hot!

The wild flowers don't bloom until March or April but the shifting sand radiates its own beauty.

There is an apparition appearing.  Is it anyone we recognize?

What little boy doesn't like to play in a great big sandbox?

Go 5 miles down the road and the vista changes completely.

Death Valley is huge.  We drove 45 miles to the northern end to visit Scotty's Castle.  It was built in the late 1920's for Albert Johnson, a Chicago insurance magnate and his wife, Bessie Pennimann, who was born and raised in Walnut Creek - not too far from where we live. 

Scotty was a roudy and shady character who lured the magnate to the desert with the promise of riches from a mine.  Scotty then became the overseer when the magnate decided to build.  This is the exquisite front door.  No photographs were allowed inside.

"To think that I shall ever see a poem as lovely as a tree."  This one is on the grounds of Scotty's Castle.

The house sits above the valley and near a natural spring that provides water.