Death Valley National Park

Our family had a fantastic adventure in Death Valley National Park in April.  Over the course of four days, we visited many of the park's highlights but also added in some lesser known spots to our agenda.  The blog posts below go into detail about each day's itinerary:

Day 1:  Panamint Dunes and Darwin Falls

Day 2:  Mosaic Canyon, Badwater Basin, Devil's Golf Course, and Artist's Drive/Palette

Day 3:  Rhyolite Ghost Town, Titus Canyon Drive, Ubehebe Crater, and Mesquite Sand Dunes

Day 4:  Dante's View and Mt. Perry Hike

How We Got There

Our family of 5 travels extensively on Southwest Airlines, never paying more than $5.60 per person (fee for using points on a flight).  How do we do it?  In short, with Rapid Reward points and the Southwest Companion Pass.  How do we accumulate enough points for 5 people to travel over and over?  It's much easier than you think and this post will give you everything you need to know to get started with free travel of your own.

For this trip, we flew Southwest from Atlanta to Burbank, California completley on points.  We drove about 3-1/2 hours to the Park and worked our way across it from west to east.  Four days later, we drove 2-1/2 hours to Las Vegas and flew out the next day, again, completely on points.  If we had purchased these tickets, we would have spent $1750!  Free air travel is so easy and it opens the doors of our National Parks in ways we'd never be able to afford otherwise.