We went to Death Valley twice, both times during Thanksgiving.  In 2007 the weather was great - warm, no rain, a bit windy (hehe, what do you expect in the desert!) but overall just awesome! We stayed in Furnace Creek campground. We liked the campground very much. It’s very conviniently located, it’s flat, all camps are very close to the road, there is water, restrooms, showers (I THINK there are showers but I’m not sure, we didn’t take any, LOL), there is gas station nearby. There were a lot of people so make reservations in advance! Reservations are accepted from October 15 through April 15, other time of the year campground is first-come-first-served. You can make reservations here.

Important notes:

1) ALWAYS have a canister with gasoline in your car. We drove to gas station to fuel and they were out of gas! Next gas station was next to our campground and over 20 miles away! Luckily Gala, friend of ours, was bold enough to go ask for gasoline from people in nearby RV camp and got almost 2 gallons! People gave us gasoline, didn’t accept any money and tried to feed us! It’s funny now but we were panicking! We had 2 kids with us, it was getting dark soon (dark equals cold in the desert in November!) and we were told there would be no fuel till tomorrow.

2) “No fuel at Scotty’s Castle”. Maybe there is now, but in Nov 2007 there was a gas station at Scotty’s Castle on the map, but in reality the gas station was closed for 2 years, so there is really no fuel at Scotty’s Castle! There were some signs on the road but we ignored them. It’s hard to decide to know what is updated more often - road signs or signs on the map.