Category: California

Hello Everyone, and thank you for checking out this week’s National Park blog! Even with fall in full swing, having grown up in the region, it is easy to take advantage of the uniquely dense and colorful forests found in the Northeastern United States. Pennsylvania especially is home to some of the country’s most impressive timber, with the USDA reporting that trees cover roughly 58% of the the commonwealth’s total area (16.8 million acres). Despite this, people often seem to forget how unique this state’s wilderness really is, with natives to the area hardly able to comprehend living without trees. This is not the case with where we find this week’s national park, which is virtually void of forest cover, as well as most other types of plant life widely found locally.

In a stark contrast to the icy arctic climate of Auyuittuq in Canada, Death Valley National Park boasts being both the driest place on the continent, and the hottest place on Earth. Located mostly in the deserts of Eastern California and continuing into Western Nevada, Death Valley is truly an intense stretch of country. At over 5,200 square miles in size, the park is the largest in the contiguous United States, and the fifth largest overall. This impressive piece of land is home to a diverse array of mountains, desert sand dunes, and, despite its name, wildlife.

One of the more distinct attractions of the park are the Eureka sand dunes,which boast an impressive height of 680 feet. Despite being a defining feature of the park, these dunes only represent about 1% of its desert area, a surprisingly small portion considering how iconic Eureka and the other four dune locations are. Other attractions include the numerous volcanic craters scattered throughout the park, the Devil’s Hole cavern, numerous mountain ranges, salt flats, and the Racetrack Playa, famous for its large rocks that mysteriously move across the desert seemingly by themselves.

Even though Death Valley is the driest area in the country, it still experiences its fair share of extreme storms. Floods occasionally damage tourist sights and infrastructure, an ironic issue for park officials to have to deal with in my opinion. However, most of the park’s climate extremes come, predictably, in the form of extreme heat. Because of this, tourists are constantly reminded to drink plenty of water to cope with the temperature, and to avoid hiking or excessive physical exertion during the day, especially in the lowest, hottest areas of the park. Overall, if you plan to visit, expect the obvious when it comes to temperature in the world’s most infamous heat.

Like Auyuittuq, I do want to someday visit this park, and experience America’s most extreme desert for myself. Although it differs from the Canadian Arctic in almost every single way imaginable, Death Valley really does have a similar adventurous feel to it, with both parks representing opposite ends of a wide spectrum of climates and regions to explore just on this continent alone. Even the state of California itself seems to depict a wide variety of ecosystems that help make it truly a unique place in this country, reminding everyone how large and diverse America really is.