Stay in Death Valley Until the Stars Come Out
A van collects you on the Strip at a time that changes with the season, runs Death Valley's overlooks, and waits for the dark.
The day is built around two pieces of sky. The first is sunset over the badlands. The second arrives ninety minutes later, when the desert is dark enough to pick out the Milky Way.
Everything before that is a long drive with five stops in it. Each stop is scheduled for thirty minutes, which is time to walk out, look and photograph, and not much more. Dante's View looks down on the valley from 5,476 feet. Badwater Basin sits 282 feet below sea level. Artist's Palette and Zabriskie Point take the rest of the afternoon.
Pickup is from your own hotel on the Strip, and the departure time moves with the season:
- January to February: 9:00 AM
- March to May: 10:30 AM
- June to August: 1:30 PM
- September to October: 11:00 AM
- November to December: 8:30 AM
The guide sends your exact time by text or email the day before, and asks you to be downstairs five minutes ahead of it.
Death Valley Sunset and Stargazing Tour from Las VegasTwelve hours with hotel pickup and a guide, run by MYTOURSTORY. From USD 249 per person, rated 4.9 from 647 reviews.www.viator.comDown to the Lowest Point in North America
The first stop is the park sign, thirty minutes for the photograph everybody takes. Then the road climbs to Dante's View, a paved overlook 5,476 feet above the valley floor, where the salt flats read as a white seam far below.
Badwater Basin is that seam up close. A wooden sign high on the cliff above the car park marks sea level, and the ground you walk out onto is 282 feet lower. Salt keeps crystallising across the basin all year. The surface is white, hard and completely exposed. Bottled water comes with the tour. Drink more of it than you think you need.
Colour, Then the Light Goes
Artist's Palette is a stretch of the Black Mountains where sedimentary hills come out pink, gold, green and purple in bands. The operator's description calls it a living painting. That is the kind of line that usually oversells, and here it roughly holds.
Zabriskie Point is the last viewpoint before the light goes: a short paved walk from the road to a rail above the golden badlands near Furnace Creek, with wave-shaped ridges and gulches below. When a road inside the park is closed by a natural disaster, the guide moves the group to another location and the day continues.
Ninety Minutes After the Sun Goes Down
Stargazing starts an hour and a half after sunset, once the sky has lost its last colour. The spot is chosen that evening, by sunset time and weather, and nobody can tell you in advance where you will be standing. What the operator lists for that hour is the Milky Way, planets and constellations, under what it describes as some of the darkest skies in the United States.
The caveat comes from the operator too. With a bright moon, heavy cloud or rain, many of those stars are gone. Check the moon phase before you pick a date. A night near new moon and a night near full moon are two different tours.
Who Can Go, and What to Bring
The booking form sells one adult rate of USD 249 and a single age band that runs from 4 to 75. The operator's own condition is tighter: only travellers under 70, and without health problems. A traveller between those two numbers should settle it with the operator before booking.
The operator also asks travellers with spinal injuries, poor cardiovascular health or a pregnancy to skip this one, and it cannot take service dogs. One booking holds up to 14 people.
Meals are not included, and the only scheduled break on the way home is a rest stop in Pahrump. Bring food for a twelve-hour day. Park fees and taxes are covered. Gratuities are not.
Pickup and drop-off both happen at your hotel door. The pin on this page sits on the Strip for that reason: our location library has no Death Valley entry yet, and the map marks The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, one of the 46 Strip hotels on the operator's pickup list. Your own pickup will be wherever you are staying.
The van gets back to Las Vegas between 10:00 PM and 1:00 AM. Cancelling is free up to 24 hours before departure, and the operator will also cancel for bad weather or for too few travellers. Booking closes at 4:00 PM the day before.
Plan nothing for the next morning. You come back in the small hours, having spent the end of the day under a sky the Strip never shows you.