Bindlestiff Tours offers a one-day tour that leaves Las Vegas in the morning and returns from Death Valley National Park in the evening. This tour offers visitation to all of the major stopping points within Death Valley as well as a visit to the Borax Museum. Transportation and lunch is provided to our guests. The tour is offered as more of a “sightseeing tour” than our other tour offerings due to the fact that Death Valley becomes a little too hot in the summer months for exploration the way we would encourage on our other tours of national parks. Due to the heat we avoid hiking and climbing activities and concentrate more on minor exploration and viewing, spending less time at each stopping point than you would experience on other tours. This is for the safety and well being of our customers, as it does have the ability to get to the point of dangerously hot within the Death Valley area.
For those of you unfamiliar with Death Valley, it is a national park (protected space) located in California a short distance from Las Vegas. We pick you up at any of a number of stopping points in Las Vegas and transport you to the park only a few hours drive away, at which point you will be allowed short explorations of Furnace Creek, the Borax Museum and other key view points within the park. Death Valley has long been known worldwide for its extreme weather, and is recognized as being the location of the hottest recorded air temperature of 134 degrees some years ago. Although there have been challenges to this record by other areas, it at least is recognized as one of the hottest places on earth each and every year, when new records are set and old ones are broken. In 2017, we set the record for the hottest July ever, with more consecutive days over 110 degrees than ever recorded before. In addition to the extreme heat, Death Valley also receives very little rainfall, creating a landscape that is otherworldly. Many comment when looking over the wide expanses of desolation that it appears as though they are looking at another planet, due to the lack of vegetation and sun bleached soil. The thought that nothing grows in Death Valley is actually untrue, however, and it is actually the home to hundreds of species of plants and animals that have adapted over thousands of years to the extreme climate. Plants have developed the ability to find the necessary water far below the surface and store it for extended periods, and animals have developed skins that allow then to survive in extreme heat. These adaptations to the living things in the area create a view that is unlike anything that most visitors will ever experience again.
Do we tour Death Valley all year, even in the heat of summer? Yes we do, and only on days of extremely high temperatures do we cancel. Our tours have been developed in a way that gives you the ability to explore for short times in the extreme temperatures before returning to the comfort of our air conditioned vans, allowing our customers to experience Death Valley in the way that has made it famous, without being uncomfortable.