Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Amargosa Hotel & Opera House/Death Valley Junction - Death Valley National Park (Part 26)

At the end of November last year (2012), I took a trip to Death Valley National Park. This is the second trip there in my life. The 1st time I went, I was still a little kid, and I didn't start taking photos yet. This time, I have a pro camera and I am ready to shoot the scenery. Death Valley National Park is known for its "out of this world" scenery, UFO sightings, and many other things. The desert is a very mysterious and beautiful place. In this chain of blog posts, I will be showing you mainly photos of Death Valley National Park, but also photos from surrounding areas like The Mojave Desert, Alabama Hills, and Rhyolite Ghost Town. I have picked out over 400 photos from my trip to show you guys and I will be dividing them into many blog posts. Unlike blog  post chains before, I obviously can't put a link of ever blog post on every single blog post, so instead, I will do the same thing I did for my Yellowstone National Park photos before, by sticking a link of the Next and Previous post on each blog post instead.

Full Resolution Photos and Prints: If you want to see full resolution photos or buy prints of any of the photos you see, they are up on my portfolio for viewing. To see my best work from Death Valley National Park, use this link. To see all of the photos from my Death Valley National Park trip use this link.

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Today, I have 8 photos from Death Valley Junction Historic District and the Amargosa Hotel and Opera House. Before I get started, I would just like to say, I highly NOT recommend staying at the Amargosa Hotel unless you desperately have to! I'll tell you more below the image of the hotel. I was not very happy with my stay that night.

Some kind of antique machine.  

 Here is a photo of the Amargosa Hotel.

Death Valley Travel Tip: I do not recommend staying at the Amargosa Hotel unless you desperately have to. I don't know how much parents paid for the stay, but I'll tell you this. Even if they offer me a stay was free, I will not go stay there another night ever again! The whole place was run down. The hotel does not provide you with any soap, shampoo, or hair dryer! As with the shower water, it was slightly yellow, warm at the beginning and it turned cold after just a minute! I had to shower cold. Good thing I brought my own shampoo, soap, and hair dryer. The hair dryer was the other thing. The power outlets in there are so loose, I had to keep pressing my hair dryer plug onto it to prevent it from falling out. The current load for those outlets are also low. My hair dryer was struggling to power its motor, and it was working a lot less efficiently than normal! There is a current issue with all the outlets. The bathroom has mold and was the dirtiest in the room (in the sense of mold and dirt, not so much as fecal matter). The drainage system sucks. When I had to use the toilet, they did warn me about clogs, so I flushed after every wipe. It clogged on the 1st wipe and I had to flush several times to get that down. Was too scared to use the toilet then on because the contract for the room said you have to pay for damages like that. The room, well you get 1 table which practically fell apart if you put anything on it and like 2 chairs. The walls were cracked up and dirty. The beds were okay (good thing...). There is wifi in the hotel, it is $20 (I think or was it $50) and it is a slow satellite (not DSL or cable) connection. The hotel owner was pretty generous and said I can use it for free, gave me the password, and says I can make a donation if I want later. Tried out the wifi, webpages either loaded slowly, but most of the time it just timed out so I gave up. So pretty much, Amagosa Opera House is an okay place to visit (probably take you 20 minutes to look around) if you are visiting Death Valley National Park and you are going close to the area (like on the route to Las Vegas), but don't stay in the hotel unless you really have to. Also, I saw that the hotel owner let a few people stay for free because they can't find a room else where (you are in the middle of nowhere). Those people just slept through the night on the lobby sofas. That is pretty generous of the owner, but still, please fix things up! The rooms are too run down for anyone to stay in! So pretty to much, my opinion, don't stay there unless you desperately have to. 


More antique machines. 

The Amargosa Opera House. 

Another photo of the Amargosa Opera House.


Photo of the sign that says Death Valley Junction Historic District.

These are all the photos for today. I hope you have enjoyed them. After Amargosa, I went ahead and drove back to Death Valley National Park and went to Dante's View. Next time I will have photos from my drive up there. Please don't forget to share the blog post with your friends and family members! Also, if you want to get notifications when I post up more photos, "Like" us on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Google+. These links can also be found on the top of the right sidebar.

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