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I bicycled on a national park road without a car in sight.
It was Death Valley National Park.
It was Badwater Road beyond the Badwater Basin and parking lot, 17 miles from Furnace Creek. The gate was down to stop motorized vehicles on Badwater Road at the famed Badwater tourist attraction.
But bicyclists and hikers were perfectly free to use the road, which had some stone, dirt and rick debris but easily passable on a bike.
I told my close friend about the road closed to cars but open to bicyclists and he had one word in response: "Heaven."
That's a great word to describe the bicycle experience of biking on this spectacular road that was below sea while also offering views of mountains topped with snow.
Death Valley is my most underrated national park.
It's remote in the sense there's no nearby interstate.
So no big crowds that you see at Zion in Utah or Grand Canyon in Arizona.
People hear, "Death Valley," and they think the land is barren and brutish.
For me, I love the colors of the raw landscape and the mountain ranges that bookend the valley.
Even though "valley" is in the name of the national park, the landscape is actually quite rugged. There are four main ways to enter the valley. I drive from the Pahrump side, which means descending more than 3,000 feet to the Furnace Creek tourist area.
The Inn at Death Valley is a spectacular lodging experience, with a nearby motel and attached units offering more modest and very decent accommodations.
The recent rains helped form mini-lakes in the valley, too, near Badwater.
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