Furnace Creek Inn, California

Hide and seek: Witness a mirage come true, with palm trees, tennis courts, and spring-fed swimming pools in the middle of a three-million–acre desert.

Death Valley National Park is famously home to the hottest, driest, and lowest points in the country. Less quantifiable is the surreal beauty of rippled sand, knife-edged dunes, and shimmering heat. The mission-style, 66-room Furnace Creek Inn has been welcoming the well-heeled and hardier Hollywood types since 1927, when a borax mining company decided to add a little tourist-attracting glamour near the Panamint Mountains. Dinners at the Inn are still dressed-up affairs, and many of the rooms have terraces and mesmerizing views. The Furnace Creek Inn, along with its stables, Pilates and yoga classes, and naturalist walks, welcomes guests from October through May. Those who think they can take the 120-degree summer temperatures can stay at the 224-room Furnace Creek Ranch, the Inn's simpler (and cheaper) sister property, year-round.

Find your way: The resort is a 106-mile drive from Las Vegas and nearly 300 miles from Los Angeles. There's also a 3,000-foot airstrip for private and chartered planes.

Furnace Creek Resort
Highway 190
Death Valley, California
Tel: 760 786 2345
Inn rooms from $335 per night; Ranch rooms from $135 per night

Next: Why to make a break for Wyoming >