After lunch at the Furnace Creek Golf Course, we wandered around the area a bit before heading back out to Ridgecrest – we had decided that we didn’t have enough daylight left for any more significant hiking, and we wanted to not drive the rough Panamint Valley road in the dark again, especially with rain in the forecast for the evening. So, we drove north on Hwy 190 along familiar ground, stopping a handful of times for more wildflower photos. Jane’s printed wildflower report she found online noted that the bloom was moving north into areas that had seen more rainfall and cooler temperatures in prior weeks, so we turned north at the Beatty Cutoff road, following it uphill for a couple of miles to broad fields of desert sunflower on both sides of the roadway. There were lots of people who had the same idea, and it was hard to get shots of the expansive terrain without capturing folks who had meandered out among the flowers. We continued northward, eventually reaching the northeast entrance to the park below Daylight Pass, where we turned west down the Mud Canyon road that would take us back downhill toward Stovepipe Wells and Hwy 190 again. The vistas both south and west were marvelous – the solid cloud cover had broken up a bit this far north, and the streaking late afternoon sunlight brought out the valley’s colors in ways we had yet to see. After a few more photo stops, we completed the detour and drove west and south out of Death Valley up the long climb to Towne Pass – it was nice to see this area before twilight, and the Panamints were beautiful as we made our way south out of the park, Telescope Peak shrouded in storm clouds as we passed it to the west. This weekend was a wonderful introduction to the eastern California deserts, where Jane hadn’t been since she was a child and Chris had hardly visited at all. There is so much left here for us to see – we may not make it back this season, but we’ll be sure to return at some point sooner than later.