Fun fact:  Did you know that Death Valley National Park is the largest in the Continental United States?  

On our last trip to Death Valley, we decided to photograph late afternoon scenes along a drive called Artist Palette.  It started out not looking like it was going to be very exciting.  But you never know, when fooling around with Mother Nature.

The first scene is looking South over the flat, barren, area called Bad Water. It is the lowest point in North America ... -282 feet below sea level.

In the late afternoon light, the white salt-crusted beds takes on a blue color as they recede into the shade.  FWIW, the blue color is the color of the sky being reflected.  I was intrigued with the straight lines and color of the scene.  It is not often that you get to see such well defined lines in nature.

The next scene was obtained by turning 90 degrees to the left (now looking eastery).  This ridge of mountains runs along those salt beds for many miles.

In the opposite direction (West) was part of the salt beds of the Badwater basin.  I switched to a telephoto and took this image:

It wasn't quite what I wanted ...  I was going for those strong horizontal blue lines so I cropped it to eliminate the distraction of the mountain range in the background.  This is one of my favorites.

We moved along the drive ending up at Artist Palette.  Here's the scene, and now you know how it got its name!

As the Sun set, a nice pink glow started to appear in the East over the palette.

Eventually turning into this ...

When photographing, always remember to turn around!  My favorite of the shoot came from another tourist standing on the ridge behind me watching the sunset. Looking at it gives me that feeling I often get when photographing these types  of scenes ... how insignificant we are in nature's scale of things.  

It was only about an hour long shoot but it yielded some pictures.  I hope you agree.

Thank you for taking the time  to look.

Adam