I've been to Death Valley in the summer, but I did it very carefully.

For one, I never left the paved roads. Summer isn't the time to go offroading there, because even one mistake can kill you. And the rangers do cruise the roads, checking stopped cars. Both times I was there, they stopped to see if everything was okay.

Secondly, even though I was staying on the paved roads, more than half the net weight in my car was due to water. I always had water in the car, even in town. Desert = carry water.

But I grew up in southern California, and know how little natural water there is.

People who are not familiar with deserts often don't realize how large they really are. The Mojave Desert alone (Death Valley is just part of it) encompasses over 22,000 square miles (MILES, not acres). And the Great Basin (only part true desert, the rest is just dry), lies to the north with over 200,000 square miles. To the south and east lies the Low Desert (aka the Sonoran Desert) that extends into Mexico, covering 120,000 sq miles. That's a total of about 340,000 square MILES of mostly uninhabited space with almost no accessible water.

People who know the desert just from television and movies just don't understand.