On Bicycling: The Artist’s Natural Beauty of Death Valley
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
Grand Canyon. Zion. Glacier. Rocky Mountain. Yosemite.
All national parks with spectacular jaw-dropping, ultra-dramatic scenery. My heart races when I think about bicycling through those national natural treasures.
Then there’s Death Valley National Park and my day trip to bicycle heaven Thursday, when I drove two hours from Summerlin to the Furnace Creek Visitor Center to soak up 75 gorgeous degrees amid a cloudless sky for a bike ride on Artist Road.
I’m in love with Death Valley and its bizarre buffet of land shapes, salt-flats, valleys, mountains, pastel landscape colors, sand dunes and badlands. You can find them from Badwater Basin at 282 feet below sea level to Telescope Peak with a summit of more than 11,000 feet.
For me, a three-hour, 25-mile bike ride from Furnace Creek to nine-mile Artist Road and back makes me happy. Artist Road is the Red Rock scenic drive of Death Valley, a one-way meandering road off Badwater Road, offering a perch to see pink, green, violet, purple, red and yellow hues in the rocky landscape south of California 190.
The first three miles on Artist Road is a challenging climb. I was crawling along at about four miles per hour. But that’s OK. The scenery is so mesmerizing that I gazed and pedaled and it didn’t matter that I was practically going at the speed of a brisk morning walk.
I made it to the first crest and took a look.
And you can, too.
Thursday was a quiet day in Death Valley and on Artist Road.
Only a few cars passed me on Artist Road. And nearly every motorist was friendly and slowed down to carefully pass me on the narrow one-lane road that snaked its way through the marvelous landscape.
It’s a wild roller-coaster ride amid the rocks, dirt and foothills in the middle of the nine-mile Artist Road and you’re in charge of the speed and braking. On a bicycle, you’re flying down hills, then braking on curves and then back out of the saddle and grinding up the slopes.
The last mile or two is all downhill as you emerge into the Badwater Road basin.
It’s the perfect winter escape. It’s typically 15 degrees warmer than Red Rock Canyon and the difference between bicycling when it’s 60 degrees compared to 75 degrees — plus the out-of-this-world landscapes — makes it worth the four-hour, 240-mile round trip.
LVSportsBiz.com strongly recommends visiting Death Valley and gives this bike ride five bicycles out of five.
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