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Golden Evening Primrose in Death Valley

The average rainfall in Death Valley is about 1.9" around Furnace Creek, but this year was a particularly dry one, so the wildflowers are even more difficult than normal to find.  I managed to photograph 15 species and to show my workshop customers some fairly dense patches, but doing so required going up one of the park's 400 miles of unpaved roads. 

It's not uncommon in Death Valley National Park to have to go off paved roads to see the best sights, since the majority of the park's 700 miles of roads are unpaved. The Racetrack, Titus Canyon and Leadfield, Devil's Golf Course, Agueberry Point and Agueberry Camp, Mosaic Canyon, Salt Creek, the charcoal kilns, Stovepipe Wells (the actual wells, not the resort), Darwin Falls, Skidoo, Saline Valley, Mustard Canyon, Chloride Cliffs… so much you stand to miss if you can't go on the more adventurous roads.

You do can into some awkward situations… we saw one rental car way up a high clearance road (about to enter a difficult 4WD section), and encountered another one coming out of Titus Canyon Road the wrong way on that one-way road after they reached a section they couldn't continue past!

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Jeff Sullivan

Jeff Sullivan leads landscape photography workshops in national parks and public lands throughout California and the American West.

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  • My favorite place on earth. Jeff gotta stay at the Furnace Creek Inn if you have not already. Been going to Death Valley since 1979. Pull the car over and shut it off and just stand outside and hear......silence.

  • Beautiful. For some reason these wild flowers are concentrated at both sides of the road in some places in Death Valley and they create such a magnificent view while looking down at the far off road from a hillock/ height.

  • The water running off the paved roads increases the water available to plants within a few feet of the road +Ravi Shastry, so seeds and plants there tend to do a little better than plants even a few yards away.

  • People seem to think of Death Valley as a desolate place  ,but the opposite is true ,at certain times of the year it is a beautiful place to see

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