Badwater Road and Death Valley

Hey all. I'm taking a trip in March down to Las Vegas via Death Valley
and assuming that the road conditions won't be any better than they are
presently (i.e., many roads, including much of Hwy 190 still closed).

Therefore, I'm wondering if my best bet to travel across, but still get
in some nice riding would be down Badwater Rd, which, as far as I can
tell, is still open.

What's that road like? It looks crooked on the map, but that could be
flat and crooked (and ugly), given that it's the desert. Is it a
quality motorcycling road (or does it have fun parts) anywhere between
Furnace Creek to Shoshone, or at that point, am I better off just going
up through Beatty and high-tailing it to LV?

Any experiences would be much appreciated.

EJ

 

Really? Why? It doesn't seem like it's been that wet of a winter or
anything. If so, I must plan a trip myself.

 

Botanist friends of my wetlands ecologist GF say so. I'll take my digital
SLR just in case. ;-)

 

I saw an article about the banner year for wildflowers on
death-valley.us. I'm not sure I'd know a good year from a bad year,
flower-wise, though.

BTW, I've been planning this trip using the Internet Trip-Tik on the
AAA website, and I have to say, that is one great tool for planning a
trip. They don't have any more detailed maps than anyone else (in
fact, they seem to have fewer recognized way-points than some other
internet map sites like MapQuest), but the features are incredible.
You can add annotations and show hotels/restaurants/points of interest,
etc. on your maps. Very cool.

And it's free (with a AAA membership)!

Also, in case anyone is interested in going down to DV, one of the
better maps I've found was actually on the NPS website here:

http://www.nps.gov/carto/PDF/DEVAmap1.pdf

And to answer my own question, Badwater Rd looks pretty flat. A couple
of touristy things to see along the way, but it doesn't sound like much
fun moto-wise.

EJ

 

We've been in a drought for several years. This year, we are running
(in San Diego) at about 2.5X normal rainfall. A lot of this rain has
reached the desert, and there are a lot of things blooming now. The
floor of the Sonoran desert, usually brown in color, was a mossy green
when I drove through about a month ago.

Check out this link:

http://www.anzaborrego.statepark.org/wildflowers.html

Rich, Urban Biker

 

Wow! It is certainly shaping up to be a beautiful spring down there. I'll
be in San Diego at the end of March for a conference, and hopefully things
will still be blooming so I can make a sidetrip to see the flowers.