Death Valley National Park

Death Valley National Park was closed Monday in the wake of a desert storm that sent flash flood waters and rivers of mud rushing across roads, claiming two lives, overturning cars and knocking out power and phone service. Visitors were escorted to the west entrance in car convoys dodging chunks of washed-out asphalt. Officials predicted it would be at least Wednesday before portions of the park reopened, and said stretches of some roads could remain closed for weeks or more.

They're back. The wildflowers, that is. After a prolonged drought, this year's bloom of spring annuals in California deserts is shaping up as the best in several years. The peak, as of the Travel section's deadline Tuesday, is expected the last two weeks of this month, depending on weather. "It's going to be a flower year that we haven't seen in five years," said Fred Jee, supervising ranger at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park east of San Diego.

After the flash floods of 1984, the gravel road that once delivered fortune-seekers and sightseers up this desert canyon vanished. Water carved the streambed clear down to bedrock, leaving a series of seven limestone waterfalls that stretch for more than a quarter mile. Weekend explorers had used the road to reach the silver mining ghost town at the top. No more. The family sedans stopped dead in their tracks at the spectacular obstacle. But people driving four-wheelers saw something different.

The rocky palisades ringing this desiccated valley are as laden with ore as they are famously inhospitable. For 150 years, miners have contended with the region's hostile conditions, drawn by the glint that first caught the eyes of forty-niners on their way to the gold fields of the distant Sierra. Besides the malevolent heat and blistering winds, modern miners face intense human opposition in a place steeped in the history of mineral extraction.

Under the shady cliffs beside a spring at the bottom of a canyon in the Grapevine Mountains, Shoshone Indians once sought respite from Death Valley's wilting heat and marked their passing by etching images on a room-size slab of granite. One symbol depicts a bighorn sheep, one a snake, but the rest are difficult to discern, lost to erosion and a blur of modern graffiti including a smiley face, crosses and scribbled initials.

The north edge of Death Valley--where a nameless two-lane highway winds through rugged Grapevine Canyon in the Amargosa Mountains--is not the most isolated place on Earth. But it seems that way. The nearest towns, if you can call them towns, are the gas-pump burgs of Stovepipe Wells and Furnace Creek, more than half an hour to the south. Real communities, with supermarkets and housing tracts, lie so far across the barren landscape that they might as well be mirages.

* Furnace Creek: The Death Valley '49ers Encampment, Nov. 8-11, will offer woodcarving competitions and mule-packing demonstrations. Death Valley National Park. 8 a.m.-9 p.m. Nov. 8-10; 8 a.m.-noon Nov. 11. Free. (760) 852-4524, http://www.deathvalley49ers.org. * Palm Springs: Wear red, white and blue Nov. 10 to the Rally for America, featuring a Marine Corps band. On Nov. 11 there will be a 10 a.m. ceremony at the Desert Memorial Park on Palm Canyon Drive; a parade at 3:30 p.m.

An area next to Death Valley National Park popular with off-road enthusiasts has been closed indefinitely to motorized vehicles by the federal Bureau of Land Management as part of a settlement of a lawsuit brought by environmentalists. The agency has ordered Surprise Canyon in the Panamint Mountains closed to vehicles until it develops a plan for protecting the Panamint alligator lizard and various rare birds.

The panoramic view of Golden Canyon from Zabriskie Point is magnificent, but don't miss getting into the canyon itself-and that's possible only by hitting the trail. Sunrise and sunset, when the light is magical and hikers are few, are good times to walk the canyon. Until the rainy winter of 1976, a road extended through Golden Canyon. A deluge washed it away, and it's been a trail ever since. The first mile of Golden Canyon Trail is self-guided.