DEATH VALLEY gleams with water, wildflowers

Death Valley is still wet. And only a fortunate few seem to be getting the best of it.

Two months after a storm that dropped a year’s rainfall in a single day, flooding roads, destroying trails and closing the park, the national park’s Oct. 15 reopening revealed a strange place made stranger.

The famously flat and dry Badwater Basin now is home to a sprawling but temporary lake, visible from water’s edge and 5,575 feet above at

Dante’s View.

Between sand dunes at Mesquite Flat, you might stumble on a puddle or a pond. In Mosaic and Golden canyons, where floodwaters surged in August, scattered boulders and silt have reshaped the narrow passages, hinting at violence just concluded. Across the plains and slopes, you see more green than usual and sometimes yellow and orange wildflowers, apparently blooming out of seasonal confusion.

Rangers say they can’t be sure how long the lake will last, and it’s unclear when the park’s many still-closed roads and other areas will reopen. But those travelers on the scene in recent days – some savvy, some lucky and many, it seems, from abroad – have half a dozen striking spectacles to choose from.

“We were very lucky,” said Todd Robertson, 35, of London, walking the Badwater shoreline in the aftermath of a spectacular sunset.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Klaus Meyer, 32, of Germany’s Black Forest region, hiking through Mosaic Canyon.

“Twelve-hour days. Six days a week. Good money,” said Jorge Santiago, 30, of Reno. He was working as a flagman near Zabriskie Point, where road repairs require traffic control.

Crucial stretches of State Route 190 and Badwater Road, which connect many of the park’s most popular sites, are open. (Check the park website for road repair stops and checkpoints before visiting.)

Once you’re in the park, trails are uncrowded, traffic is scant, roads are freshly scraped (through gravel patches remain) and occupancy is low in hotels and campgrounds at Furnace Creek and Stovepipe Wells Village. Many campgrounds are open.

Badwater is the lowest spot in the continental U.S., 282 feet below sea level, and it’s usually a vast flat expanse of salty, crusty playa that was once a lakebed.

Sometimes there’s a little water near the boardwalk that the National Park Service has built near the parking lot,