The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: January fourth, down in Death Valley.

Yesterday, we explored a slew of California paradises. A short description of the huge desert along that state's border with Nevada might match many concepts of hell.

With annual rainfall of less than two inches and summer temperatures that often reach 120 degrees, Death Valley is the driest, hottest place in America. At 282 feet below sea level, the valley's Badwater salt flats are the low point of the Western Hemisphere, the floor of an evaporated pre-historic lake, whose waters once lapped 600 feet up the steep mountains that surround it. It is also vast. Seven years ago, Death Valley National Monument was re-designated a National Park, and became the largest in the lower 48 states. At 5,200 square miles, it is bigger than the state of Connecticut.

Death Valley is a place of contrast and paradox, of hard rock and sifting dunes, of blinding light and stygian shadow, of absolute silence and singing sand, of quick death and near immortality. The bristlecone pines that cling to Telescope Peak, the park's high point, are the earth's longest lived species. Pharaohs still ruled Egypt when some of today's residents first took root.

Despite the heat-bleached landscape, there are riots of color, hills of pink, green and yellow, a mineral palette swirled by erosion's hand into natural Klees and Kandinskys that turn gold as the sun sets.

And though it is the definition of desolation, Death Valley also hosts more than a million visitors each year. They come to experience its extremes, to wander past spires of salt, to watch rocks race across dry mudflats. Death Valley is like no place else on earth.

FMI For information on Death Valley National Park, call 760-786-2331 or visit www.nps.gov/deva.

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