This vast masterpiece is enormous, it’s hard to fathom that this park represents just a tiny slice of the entirety of the basin. The Great Basin proper, home of the country’s largest desert, occupies about 200,000 square miles. the park is best known for the Lehman Caves and preternaturally dark night skies. Also there is a 13,000-foot peak, a surprising range of ecosystems from sagebrush to subalpine and a smattering of folks who won’t be running into their neighbors.
No, you’re not the last person on Earth. But standing alone somewhere in the largest U.S. national park south of Alaska — over 3 million acres of desolate mountain ranges, salt flats, sand dunes, desiccated lakebeds, vacant caves and ancient canyons — may get you imagining. Death Valley’s highlights naturally run extreme: from the lowest spot in the Western Hemisphere at Badwater (282 feet below sea level) to the park’s high point atop the snowy summit of 11,049-foot Telescope Peak
