Hi all, my wife and I completed our first trip into Death Valley and returned home a few days ago. I can't believe it took us so long to finally make our way out there. I have always been a mountain guy, I spend way too much time in the Sierras, and so this was us going out of our comfort zone and heading into the desert, and man were we not disappointed. It was an awesome trip, almost everything went according to plan and my wife is already talking about returning there in the next month or so. Here's a brief summary of our short but awesome trip:
DEC 3 0200: we left the Bay Area on time and had the road to ourselves/ We arrived at Stovepipe wells at 1030, topped off and headed for a quick visit to Mesquite Dunes
Headed in the direction of Beatty and jumped onto the Titus Canyon Rd around 1130. What an amazing drive!
after Titus, we decided to set up camp in Echo Canyon. after being up all night driving, then going to Titus, we were tired and turned in by 1900
DEC 4 0645
Spent a cold but comfortable night in the back of the truck and the sun warmed everything up once it came out
This was the meat of our trip. We hit all the main tourist spots. Badwater, Devil's golf course, Artist drive, Zabriske, Dante's View and a few other spots.
We decided to camp again at Echo Canyon and got there just in time to make dinner and watch the sun go down.
On this night, some campers pulled up nearby and started lighting fireworks for about an hour which was pretty annoying and I think prohibited there. Other than that, it was a good night.
Got a late start DEC 5 and left the park at 1200. The only place we didn't get to on our itinerary was Darwin Falls, but we can see it next time as I am sure we will be back soon. Thanks again to everyone on this forum that helped with us getting out trip planned. You guys are awesome.
*on our first night DEC 3 at exactly 1800, a string of large lights appeared to come out of nowhere from the western sky. At first we thought it was military planes performing exercises, but they were dead silent, in a perfect line, and had a completely flat trajectory. One after the other, they crossed the night sky and vanished as they hit the East. We lost count of how many there were after 50. I could not make out what they were, and the line they were all following was so straight, it looked like whatever the lights were, they were in a formation. The lights were brighter than anything in the sky except for the moon, which wasn't out yet at that point from where we were. The entire thing lasted 3 minutes. I marked the last light vanishing into the Eastern sky at 1803 exactly. I am not a UFO guy, but I am an engineer that works on mapping and automated driving sensors and I can't for the life of me cannot figure out what we saw in the sky. Is this some sort of naturally occuring phenomena that happens in the skies in Death Valley? Is it the military? I have felt like a crazy person trying to explain this to people trying to figure out what it was we saw. The lights were so bright, it seemed like they were at a relatively low altitude, but they made zero noise so that leads me to believe that they were at a much higher elevation than they looked to be (if they were aircraft).
The lights also did not twinkle, blink or shimmer. The lights were solid, like looking at an LED. I would estimate the number of lights we saw cross the night sky was between 50-75. If anyone can explain what we saw out there, or if you were also in the Valley that night and saw these lights, please let me know what these things were. Other people in the park must have seen these things too as they were big, bright and across the entire Western sky. Sorry to go all cooky, I am really not trying to be UFO guy here, just trying to figure out what it was we saw. I feel like a crazy person even describing it, but I have been in the path of totality, I am an amateur novice telescope guy and outside of being in the path of totality during the last eclipse, this was the most brilliant, and spooky thing I had ever witnessed in the sky. For the record, we were completely sober for the trip, I didn't even bring beer on the trip, since I have been working on getting my Euric acid levels down after having a gout attack earlier this year which was caused from dehydration. If anyone has any answers as to what these lights were, or if you were in the park that night and saw it, please let me know your thoughts!
DEC 3 0200: we left the Bay Area on time and had the road to ourselves/ We arrived at Stovepipe wells at 1030, topped off and headed for a quick visit to Mesquite Dunes
Headed in the direction of Beatty and jumped onto the Titus Canyon Rd around 1130. What an amazing drive!
after Titus, we decided to set up camp in Echo Canyon. after being up all night driving, then going to Titus, we were tired and turned in by 1900
DEC 4 0645
Spent a cold but comfortable night in the back of the truck and the sun warmed everything up once it came out
This was the meat of our trip. We hit all the main tourist spots. Badwater, Devil's golf course, Artist drive, Zabriske, Dante's View and a few other spots.
We decided to camp again at Echo Canyon and got there just in time to make dinner and watch the sun go down.
On this night, some campers pulled up nearby and started lighting fireworks for about an hour which was pretty annoying and I think prohibited there. Other than that, it was a good night.
Got a late start DEC 5 and left the park at 1200. The only place we didn't get to on our itinerary was Darwin Falls, but we can see it next time as I am sure we will be back soon. Thanks again to everyone on this forum that helped with us getting out trip planned. You guys are awesome.
*on our first night DEC 3 at exactly 1800, a string of large lights appeared to come out of nowhere from the western sky. At first we thought it was military planes performing exercises, but they were dead silent, in a perfect line, and had a completely flat trajectory. One after the other, they crossed the night sky and vanished as they hit the East. We lost count of how many there were after 50. I could not make out what they were, and the line they were all following was so straight, it looked like whatever the lights were, they were in a formation. The lights were brighter than anything in the sky except for the moon, which wasn't out yet at that point from where we were. The entire thing lasted 3 minutes. I marked the last light vanishing into the Eastern sky at 1803 exactly. I am not a UFO guy, but I am an engineer that works on mapping and automated driving sensors and I can't for the life of me cannot figure out what we saw in the sky. Is this some sort of naturally occuring phenomena that happens in the skies in Death Valley? Is it the military? I have felt like a crazy person trying to explain this to people trying to figure out what it was we saw. The lights were so bright, it seemed like they were at a relatively low altitude, but they made zero noise so that leads me to believe that they were at a much higher elevation than they looked to be (if they were aircraft).
The lights also did not twinkle, blink or shimmer. The lights were solid, like looking at an LED. I would estimate the number of lights we saw cross the night sky was between 50-75. If anyone can explain what we saw out there, or if you were also in the Valley that night and saw these lights, please let me know what these things were. Other people in the park must have seen these things too as they were big, bright and across the entire Western sky. Sorry to go all cooky, I am really not trying to be UFO guy here, just trying to figure out what it was we saw. I feel like a crazy person even describing it, but I have been in the path of totality, I am an amateur novice telescope guy and outside of being in the path of totality during the last eclipse, this was the most brilliant, and spooky thing I had ever witnessed in the sky. For the record, we were completely sober for the trip, I didn't even bring beer on the trip, since I have been working on getting my Euric acid levels down after having a gout attack earlier this year which was caused from dehydration. If anyone has any answers as to what these lights were, or if you were in the park that night and saw it, please let me know your thoughts!
