I’ve decided I need to see more sunrises. I think I can count the sunrises I’ve seen in the past year on one hand and most of these I saw unintentionally, on early morning drives to the airport or while frantically throwing together the references for a 27-page research paper. Until last week, I don’t think I had ever woken up just to watch the sun rise.

On our drive from Monterey back to Taos for the holidays we camped in Death Valley. No, it’s not on the way. Neither is Phoenix and we went there, too. Whoops. Anyway, we had been planning this Death Valley venture for awhile. Planning the way Macky and I plan things, which means plugging it into Google maps and doing no real research. We had this idea that we would take photos of the sunrise in the desert. We also had the idea that Death Valley would be flat (it’s not) and hot (it is… but not in December) and that the road we were planning to take would be, you know, open to traffic and not closed for flood damage (flood damage in the desert? wait, what?). However, on the rare occasion that Macky and I make plans we tend to stick to them, much the way a dog keeps begging after the dishes have been cleared. There’s no sense to it. We drove late into the night, found a free campground, cooked dinner on an illegal campfire and set our alarms for 6:30 AM. (Yes, I willingly got out of bed at 6:30 in a situation where coffee was not readily available. I assure you stranger things have happened, I just can’t think of any at the moment.)

So, this is what it’s like to wake up in Death Valley. As you can see, it’s not flat. But it is pretty freaking beautiful.

Where: Emigrant Campground, Death Valley, California