Death Valley is gorgeous today, stormy and gray, the mountains' colors showy and bright -- chocolate brown, teal, red and gray vivid beneath billowing storm clouds.
At the Death Valley Museum, run by the National Park Service, we stood at 190 feet below sea level. All around us stand rocky mountains with almost no vegetation, with snowy peaks in the distance.

We hiked around at Artist's Palette, weaving between gorgeous hills of deep green, red, brown and gray.


Dusk fell over the desert, the sun setting in a bed of brilliant clouds.