Believe it or not, there are people who feel this summer isn’t hot enough. Instead of sheltering in place in air-conditioned comfort, this breed of person actually seeks out the hottest places on earth at the hottest time of the year.
Welcome to so-called “heat tourism.” Rising temperatures have been attracting tourists of late to the location billed as the hottest place on the planet, Death Valley National Park on the California-Nevada border.
Included in the fun is snapping an obligatory selfie next to a famous outdoor thermometer outside the Furnace Creek Visitor Center, where temps were seen climbing north of 120 degrees.
The site logged the hottest temperature ever recorded on earth of 134 degrees back in 1913, and some are flocking to the site to see if it will be broken on their watch.
One of the visitors to the park last week was Alessia Dempster from generally cool and damp Edinburgh, Scotland. “It’s very hot,” she tells the Associated Press. “I mean, especially when there’s a breeze, you would think that maybe that would give you some slight relief from the heat, but it just really does feel like an air blow dryer just going back in your face.”
Other tourists vacationing at national parks, including Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona and west Texas’ Big Bend National Park, are being warned to stay off the trails when the sun’s at its peak.
That said, Death Valley is so named for a reason: It earned its name again on Tuesday, July 18, when a 78-year-old LA hiker named Steve Curry collapsed and died from what authorities said was a heat-related fatality.