This year, San Diego is having the most intense red tide that anyone can remember in some time. It’s remarkably thick, remarkably large in terms of geographic coverage, remarkably bioluminescent, and has persisted for a remarkably long time! A red tide is a massive algal bloom, sometimes harmful, but generally not in Southern California. Our red tides are usually made up of the dinoflagellate Lingulodinium polyedrum, which has the really awesome property of being bioluminescent. Movement causes them to flash neon blue.

Diving in a red tide sucks during the day (it’s like diving in thick red pea soup and you can’t see a thing), but at night it’s awesome. Often you can get beneath the red tide and have great visibility, and then once you’re back in shallow water towards the end of the dive the vis goes to crud… but it’s all good! Turn off your lights and just enjoy the show. Move your hand in front of your face and a wave a blue sparkles flows off your fingers. It’s like Disney, but way better and in real life. Swimming fish create blue streaks in front of you. The bigger the fish, the bigger the streak. You can’t see more than a couple feet, but man can you see the blue streaks. The really big blue streaks get your attention! Turn to your buddy and he’s completely outlined in neon blue sparkles. Sometimes it’s so thick that you can’t see anything but blue because the movement of your mask creates so much bioluminescence that you can’t see past your mask!

The surface swim out and back can be amazing also—once you get past the surf zone and a little further from the city lights, your motion creates a brilliant blue wake. I’ve tried to get photos on the surface and below water, but haven’t succeeded. I’m not sure that it’s possible, even with the best digital SLRs. But you can get great photos from the beach of surf glowing blue as the motion of the breaking wave causes the dinoflagellates to fire. Here are some photos that I’ve gotten of this red tide—the closeup photos were taken at Torrey Pines State Beach (a nice dark spot once you get away from the road) and the wider shots were taken at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Click the first thumbnail to view photos.

My recent photography trip to Utah and Arizona started and ended around Page, Arizona.  Most people know of Page (if they do) because of the Glen Canyon Dam at the downstream end of Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon National Recreational Area.  Photographers, however, know of the area because of Horseshoe Bend and Antelope Canyon.

Horseshoe Bend is a sunset shot, so when I arrived in Page just an hour or so before sunset, I headed straight there.  I hadn’t been to this location before, but had read plenty of descriptions of photographing there… and was slightly terrified!  Plenty of photographers have said that this was one of the scariest places they’d ever shot.  In order to get the outer edge of the bend of the Colorado River into the frame of your photograph, you have to set up your tripod literally inches from the edge of the cliff.  The 1,100 foot cliff.  Straight down!  A Greek tourist fell to his death a couple years ago–apparently he was standing on or near the edge and the sandstone gave way.

The first part of the trail from the parking area at Horseshoe Bend is quite steep and sandy.  It’s a hard slog uphill… and I happened to hit it exactly when the angle of the sun was exactly that of the trail and straight into the sun–so you couldn’t see a thing!  But to make it more fun, I slogged up that hill not once, not twice, but three times.  This was my first photo stop on this trip and I didn’t have my gear all settled into place yet; first I forgot my headlamp, in case I stayed out there too long after sunset, and second I forgot my intervalometer (remote shutter release).  By the time I was doing the first part of the trail the third time, the sun was getting dangerously close to setting.

Happily, I met up with fellow nature photographer Che Wilson, from Tucson, and his girlfriend Kelly.  Neither of us had shot Horseshoe Bend before and he was less intimidated by it than I was–which in turn made me more confident.  Even just having company made it less intimidating!  Che was willing to stand right at the edge, with his tripod fully extended.  Me, I put my tripod on it’s lowest setting, sat down five feet from the edge, and scooted out!  Check out the photo here, to the right, of how close you have to set your tripod to the edge of the 1,100 foot drop!  Sadly, Che and I got skunked on the sunset–no clouds at all–so the photos are less spectacular than they could be.  The following evening there were all kinds of big, poofy clouds and I’d bet that photos from here would have totally rocked.  I thought about sticking around for sunset again at Horseshoe Bend, but the wind was howling… and perching several inches from the edge in really strong winds seemed like not a great idea!

I wasn’t sure where I’d end up for the night, but after some quick research I ended driving back over just into Utah to the Lone Rock campground in the Glen Canyon National Recreational Area.  It turned out to be a very popular beach campground, where I set up my tent feet from the edge of Lake Powell and got a great night’s sleep–even though there were probably 100 RVs also camped there!  Early the next morning, I was up and out to be at Lower Antelope Canyon when they opened that Navajo Tribal Park at 8:00 AM.

Antelope Canyon (Upper and Lower) are two very narrow slot canyons which are famous for their photographs of “God beams” (light beams) filtered through the narrow top openings in the canyons.  Lower Antelope Canyon is supposed to be a early morning shoot and Upper Antelope Canyon is a late morning to midday shoot–for the God beams.  At 8:00, I was the first one into Lower Antelope Canyon along with a couple guides who were on cleanup crew (raking the sand and removing tumbleweeds that had fallen in overnight).  Later I heard that part of the morning cleanup is also bagging snakes which have fallen in overnight, but I didn’t see them bag any snakes (not sure if there weren’t any or if they were discreet!).

In summer, the “photography tour”–self-guided and longer–is only two hours (instead of four in winter)… which is nowhere near enough time given the number of tourists going through the canyon every 15 minutes in tour groups!  Getting a long-exposure shot in was pretty difficult… either a tourist was walking into your shot, or they knew enough to hold back… but they’d pull out their point-and-shoot camera and fire off a bunch of flash shots–still ruining your shot!  I ended up shooting with a really nice German couple whose names I didn’t get (one of the lessons I’m slowly learning is that it’s pretty much always a mistake not to get the names of the folks you end up shooting with!) and we all opted to stay in the canyon for an extra hour.  They charge extra, but you simply couldn’t get your shots in without the additional time, given how much waiting you had to do.  Even better would be if they would open the place at 7:00, with a first hour (of great light, I’m sure!) for photographers only.

In the end, given how seriously annoying it was to photograph in Lower Antelope Canyon during summer tourist season, and given that Upper Antelope Canyon is more popular (it has better God beams), I opted to skip Upper Antelope Canyon on this trip.  I’ll go back someday in Winter or Spring, when the place is less overrun!

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I’ve been fascinated by Anasazi (Ancient Puebloan) ruins for most of my life.  Since childhood, I’ve been carrying around a couple small photos of my sister and me inside of one of the larger cliff dwellings (Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde, Colorado) and went through a phase 10-15 years ago where I read a lot of books about Native Americans of the Southwest United States.  Now, as a photographer, I’ve wanted to start visiting some of these places and photographing them.

Not being a big fan of tourist throngs, and with an emphasis of photography, two of the ruins that really stand out are House on Fire and Fallen Roof House, both in the Cedar Mesa area of Utah.  Each of these is a stunning location, and neither is set up as a tourist destination.  So on my recent and first photographic tour of the Northern Arizona and Southern Utah area, they were on the list to go check out.  This trip was more of a familiarization while hitting a bunch of the iconic spots… later I’ll go back and take my time at individual locations.

The night before Cedar Mesa found me photographing sunset and the blue hour after sunset at Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park in Utah.  I planned to camp there and get up very early for sunrise photography and to drive the 100 miles to these ruins, but I stayed out too late photographing and then had a really hard time in the dark finding the dirt road to the unimproved campground… and once I did find it, I was not convinced that my Honda Accord would safely get me out the road.  The only local hotel was full, so I hit the road very late up to Cedar Mesa, arriving around midnight and pulling down some random, dark dirt road to grab a few hours of sleep in the back of the car.

Bright and early the next morning, after a groggy breakfast at a little joint in Blanding, Utah, (greeter, waitress and cook were all the same woman, who I think owned the place!), I headed out to find the trailhead for House on Fire.  None of these places are marked and the internet has often sparse (or incorrect) directions.  Which was true in this case as well… there was no road whatsoever at the designated spot!  But some poking around and creative reading of the directions (“maybe 0.3 miles before really means after…”), finally netted me the correct unmarked, unpaved road.  I drove right past the trailhead and when I figured out my error and turned around, another person had showed up.

Her name was Lynn and she was on a road trip from Minnesota, where she will be retiring later this summer as a school teacher.  She’d been out there the day before and had not succeeded in finding the ruins, but had talked with a ranger and was giving it another go today.  We got our gear together, found the trailhead, signed the BLM register, and shared the hike up the canyon.  It was a pleasant 20-30 minutes up an often-treelined canyon wash.  I had succeeded in finding GPS coordinates for the ruin in a reference book in a public library in Arizona the day before, so kept an eye out for whether we were headed in the right direction.  As always, even with GPS, we nearly walked past the ruins!

As it turned out, we got there hours too early!  Everything we’d both read was that it was a mid-morning photo location where the light was right once it hit the floor of the canyon and reflected onto the ruins.  It turns out that what really makes the color go off is when the light hits the rock just in front of the ruins.  So we explored a bit and hung out for a couple hours.  A pair of locals out hiking stopped to chat for a bit, and a pair of German tourists showed up to also photograph.  They’d seen me at Monument Valley the day before and had been at my next stop, Fallen Roof House, earlier that morning.  They were very nice and I enjoy company, so I wish we’d talked the day before and had managed to hook up for both ruins!

Late, late morning the light finally started going off for House on Fire.  The odd rock striations above the living quarters take on a red hue and look just like fire billowing out of the roof when photographed from the right angle.  We got our photos and headed out.  Lynn was heading south and the Germans were headed north, so I headed off to Fallen Roof House on my own.

Fallen Roof House is about a half hour away, several miles drive down an unmarked, unpaved dirt road, and then a 30-45 minute hike down into a canyon system.  All the directions say that the route can be hard to follow and that you have to make sure that you pick the right trailhead (there are several right next to each other!).  Picking the right trailhead turned out to be one of the hardest parts.  From there, with one notable exception early on the trail, the route was relatively well marked with either visible trail or rock cairns.  I was all alone for a couple hours on this hike, mid-afternoon but not too hot.  Once again, I walked right past the ruins… but not too far.  Unlike House on Fire, these ruins sit perhaps 100-150 feet above the canyon floor.  You have to scramble up steep slickstone to get to them.  Not dangerous, but you have to plan your route out well.

The ruins are gorgeous.  The section of collapsed cliff creates the most amazing patterns in the rock.  Mostly the rock pieces sit as if they are where they fell in front of the ruins, but three slabs are neatly stacked on top of each other–most likely by a human.  This bothered me, so I tried to keep them out of the photos.

One description of the ruins mentioned that continuing northeast on the same, high section of the cliff would shortly bring you to another set of ruins, but (a) the cliff didn’t run northeast (!?!?) and (b) explore as I might in both directions, I couldn’t find any nearby ruins.  There was one interesting-looking narrow path around a corner of the canyon further down-canyon, but narrow paths 100-150 feet up a cliff while on my own didn’t seen wise, so I didn’t try the path.

The trail back out was uneventful–so long as you kept a close eye on the rock cairns, and I was shortly back at my car.  Both this canyon and the canyon that House on Fire sits in are said to include quite a few ruins, so I hope to go back some day and spend a day or two in each canyon, just exploring.  They’re fabulous, untouched reminders of a time long past.

Click the first thumbnail to view photos

I do not know that there have been any times in my life that I could say, without embellishment, that I could have died.  Until yesterday.

I started the day camped at the edge of Lake Powell at the Lone Rock beach campground, just over the border into Utah from Page, Arizona.  Something woke me at 3 AM and my sleepy brain registered that the sound of the lake was closer than it should be.  I unzipped the tent door and looked out… to find the lake lapping peacefully at the sand some five feet from my tent, instead of the 20 feet it had been when I went to sleep.  According to the radio, Lake Powell is rising about a foot per day right now.  I dragged my tent another 20-30 feet up the beach and went back to sleep.

A few hours later, once the early-rising sun had roused me, I got out Laurent Martres’ book “Photographing the Southwest” (Utah & Colorado, 1st edition) to figure out the day’s itinerary.  I’d been everywhere that I’d planned and was headed home through southern Utah, and hadn’t decided yet whether or not to spend Friday photographing and, if so, where?  Reading the chapter “Around the Paria”, I was particularly struck by the hoodoos in Wahweap drainage, but the roads were described as serious four wheel drive only.  As most of the stuff that interested me required something other than a Honda Accord, I decided to just head NW up Highway 89 and wing it.

A short while later, in Big Water, Utah, I came upon a Bureau of Land Management Information Center, so turned in to ask about the roads to the Wahweap Hoodoos.  Maybe they had been improved since the first edition of Martres’ book was published?  There I met the most helpful ranger James Cates, who completely looked his part.  No, he said, not only had the roads not been improved, but the roads that Martres wrote about weren’t even public roads!  Instead, he pulled out a map of how to hike up Wahweap Wash to the two sets of hoodoos–about nine miles round trip, or about an hour and a half each way, he said.  Bring plenty of water.  He showed me photos that one of the other rangers had taken, and they were just beautiful.  It looked as if mid- to late-morning would be the time to photograph them.

Initially, I talked about perhaps just burning the day in the area, camping at the trailhead, and heading up the wash at first light the next day–so that at least one of the hikes wouldn’t be in the heat of the day.  But then I looked at my watch and noted that it was just after 8:00.  The day before I had done a “45 minute” hike in about 30 minutes, so maybe this would be more like an hour and I could get there before 10:00… including getting my gear together and the 10-15 minute drive to the trailhead.  This was when I got stupid.

Wahweap is high desert, at about 4,000 feet.  High cliffs and low scrub.  No shade.  The high temperature yesterday was in the low 90s.  I drank one water on the way to the trailhead and had room for four bottles of water in my hiking gear, two 24-oz and two 20-oz.  At the last moment, I grabbed a fifth water as I walked away from the car… just an ordinary half-liter bottle of water that I figured I could crumple when I finished and shove in my bags somewhere.  Off I headed up the wash… beginning at 9:00.  Except that it was 9:00 in California.  In Utah it was 10:00.  What is it that they say about a series of small mistakes…?

The hike was long.  And hot.  I kept feeling like I was seriously overheating, especially my head–and I figured that my head was the last part of me that I wanted overheated.  My big shade hat is wonderful for keeping the sun off, but retains too much heat.  I kept alternating taking the hat off and risking sunburn for a bit, then putting it back on and heating up.  Or do you heat up just as much or more with the hat off, but you can’t feel it?  These were the things going through my head.

I figured that I would drink three of the five waters on the way up, leaving two for the return.  Getting water in you early is better than late.  It was OK if I got back to the car a little thirsty, so long as my insides were hydrated and I was still peeing.  Every ten minutes or so I would pause and just breathe, trying to not overheat.  The wash seemed never-ending.  The heat oppressive.  Twice the wash took big, curving bends and I found paths cutting across the low scrub on the inside of the curves, saving myself a little time.  Interestingly, many parts of the wash were still muddy, and a few places had standing water.  But the ranger had assured me that there was no chance of a flash flood–the snow melt was further north in Utah and there was no rain in the forecast for the area.

I had to keep telling myself to slow down.  I have a certain hiking pace, and it was too fast for this heat.  I was overheating and tripping over too many small rocks.  Not picking my feet up enough wasn’t a good sign, I thought.

After an hour and 40 minutes, I was there!  The hoodoos were completely amazing.  They are in two areas right next to each other.  From where you first see them, there is a footpath that winds maybe two minutes near the cliff through an area of surprisingly dense vegetation, then you’re at the first group… and the footpath continues over a hill and through some boulders around the corner to the second, and more spectacular group of hoodoos.  I went straight to the second, northern group, where I drank a little water and had a Clif bar.  Then I set myself a one-hour time limit for shooting.  Whatever I got in an hour, I got.  Then I needed to start back to get out of the heat.  It concerned me that when I would look up at the top of the cliff and then look down, I felt a little dizzy.

Mostly I stayed at the northern grouping and photographed, including five minutes in the shade of the cliff, then a short while at the southern grouping.  My time was up.  Head back now, bub.  I had made a deal with myself that I would not take any photos on the hike in or hike out, so that I wouldn’t spend any more time hiking in the heat than necessary.  It would be too easy to get caught up in taking photos here and photos there, and add a lot of time to the hike.  Time in the heat that I didn’t figure that I could afford.  I wish that I had photos of the hike and the wash, but with the exception of once when I was later standing in the shade of a cliff, I kept my deal.  So I packed up my camera, found the path through the surprisingly dense and green vegetation, and headed off.

I was mostly through the vegetation when there was suddenly a very loud ZzzzzZzzzzZzzzzZzzzz sound.  It persisted and sounded like it was on my person.  It sounded electric or electronic, almost like an old kitchen timer–not the kind that goes “beep beep”, but the kind that winds down and goes “bzzzzz” when it winds out.  I stopped and did a quick inventory.  I had a GPS in my front fanny pack, could the GPS be making a noise like that?  No.  My camera?  My camera was in the pack on my back.  Could it be making a noise like that?  No.  Plus the sound wasn’t coming from my back.  It sounded like it was coming from the water bottle on my right hip.  Earlier the water bottle on my left hip had leaked some, and this sound was like a bottle of carbonated water just cracked so that it was fizzing out.  Looked at the water on my right hip in confusion–it wasn’t carbonated water and it wasn’t leaking.  This process took me perhaps 20-30 seconds.

Then I saw the rattlesnake.  At best it was two feet away on my right side.  It was at most a couple feet long–not as small as the baby I saw last year at Torrey Pines State Park, but not huge.  Struck me as mid-sized.  Juvenile?  Juveniles are bad; more dangerous than adults.  Less control.  I honestly have no other idea what it looked like.  It could have been neon orange for all I know.  Nor do I know if it was coiled with head up to strike.  All I know is that it was a rattlesnake, it had been continuously rattling the entire time I’d been standing there, and it was close enough to me that I’d thought the sound had been coming from my own hip.  I took a huge sideways step to the left and dashed the remaining yards out of the vegetation.

Once out, heart racing, I checked my leg and pants for any sign of a bite.  Had I been bitten and I was so amped that I hadn’t realized it yet?  I hadn’t.  I thanked the sky profusely.  Who was I thanking?  God?  Old Indian spirits?  I was an hour and 40 minutes of strenuous hiking in 90s heat and mid-day sun, with no shade, from my car.   Then another 15 minutes drive to any human beings.  Two hours from help, most of it strenuous.  Blood pumping through my body.  Pumping venom fast.  Can you survive an hour and 40 minute hike in the sun after being bitten by a rattlesnake… all the more a perhaps-juvenile snake, which tend to inject more venom?

The first half hour of the hike back out was hard.  So very hot.  I kept stumbling.  Not quite classic Western movie with the comical stumbling heat stroke victim, but my gait was, shall we say, inelegant.  It seemed like every time when I was really getting too hot, a little breeze would appear up the wash.  I would outstretch my arms, letting the breeze flow over me, and say “thank you, thank you” to the sky.  I avoided all vegetation and shaded areas.  No more snakes for me.  If I stayed in the heat of the center of the wash, I’d be on my own.  But that meant not using either of the shortcuts that I’d used on the way in.  The walk would be longer this time.  And hotter.  But I’d take that risk over a snake bite so far from help.  Twice I managed to find a couple feet of shade right up against cliffs… but only those with sandy bottoms where I could clearly see that there were no snakes.  I brought five waters with me on this hike.  Several more would have been better.

The second half of the walk out my body found its groove.  It was still unbearably hot, but I wasn’t getting dizzy.  I plodded along, center wash, forcing myself not to look at my watch or the GPS too often.  At my car were an ice-cold Gatorade and and ice-cold apple.   All I wanted was to stand by my car and drink the Gatorade and say “this was stupid, but I’m alive.”  And get there I did.  Another hour and 40 minutes.

Right when I arrived back at my car, a large raven appeared from nowhere and cawed excitedly at me from the cliff for a minute.  Perhaps it was he who’d watched over me?

What would have happened if the rattlesnake had bitten me?  I do not know.  Can you hike out that far in the heat after being bitten?  I had nine hours in the car driving home to think about that.  And to keep feeling my right leg to make sure that I really hadn’t been bitten.  Would I be dead in the wash with photos of the stunning Wahweap Hoodoos on my memory card in my bag, with Kate back in San Diego on the phone starting a search for me?  Would I be in the hospital somewhere in Arizona or Utah, perhaps in bad shape but alive?

In the end, the rattlesnake did his job.  He warned me.  I stood there like an idiot for 20-30 seconds and patiently he warned me and waited for me to get it.

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I had to be in San Diego until noon on Thursday, and again at noon on Sunday, and wanted to get out of town… so decided to do a quick run up Highway 395 to the area around Bishop.  Got to Lone Pine and the Alabama Hills around 5:30 PM, in time for some quick scouting before sunset.  Alabama Hills is known for its rock arches and I wanted to find a south or southeast facing arch that I could frame the Milky Way in.  Stopped off at Subway for a quick dinner and then heard from Jeff Sullivan that he was going to be at Mono Lake that night, then Alabama Hills the next night… the exact opposite of my plan.  Having company is fun, so I jumped in the car and sped north as fast as I could to try to make it in time for sunset at Mono Lake, about another two hours drive north.

I made it… without a speeding ticket!  Sadly, sunset wasn’t photogenic.  And the sky clouded up.  NOT what we needed for night photography.  We stood around in the increasing cold (Mono Lake is at 6,400 feet) and watched the darkening sky… and the clouds began to dissipate!  Had a crazy good session shooting the Milky Way behind the tufa formations at Mono Lake.

Tufas are these incredible fingers of rock sticking out of the lake, that in fact used to not stick out of the lake.  But since Los Angeles steals all the water from this region, the lake water level is some 35-40 feet lower than it used to be and these rock formations are now above water.  They’re calcium carbonate that forms from the interaction of natural springs beneath the lake and the alkali lake water.  By court order, Los Angeles needs to stop stealing quite so much water from the region and restore this lake to higher water levels, so these amazing structures will again disappear from view.  Enjoy them now!

By 12:30 AM, it was 32 degrees and I was wearing every stitch of clothing that I had!  Not sure if my sleeping bag would have handled the probable-mid-20′s that we would have seen by sunrise, so I figured I’d head south a bit for lower elevations before grabbing some sleep.  And once I was on the road, I just kept going… figured that the weather forecast was better for Friday morning than for Saturday morning, so I might as well do sunrise Friday morning in Alabama hills.  I got there at 2:30 AM and got situated, and was asleep by about 3:00 AM in the backseat of my car.  Not terribly comfortable, but beat setting up a tent at that hour!

I awoke at 5:00 AM and realized that (a) I’d locked myself inside the car, and (b) I had recently lost the little lock/unlock keychain fob thingy (what are they called??) for my car, and (c) if you unlock the car from the inside or start the car without first unlocking it with the fob thingy, the alarm goes off.  Oh, and (d) I didn’t know how to turn the alarm off without the fob thingy once it was triggered.  So, yes, I’m the jerk whose car alarm went off and off at 5:00 near several people camped at Alabama Hills.  Finally figured out how to turn it off.

Sunrise was beautiful, but then the weather went to crap.  30+ MPH winds and completely overcast, hazy sky.  Forecast wasn’t encouraging.  A night in a tent in high winds, after only two hours of sleep the night before, wasn’t appealing.  So instead of being optimistic and waiting for sunset to see if a miracle occurred and it cleared, I packed it in and headed south to San Diego.  30 hours, 900 miles, and 2 hours of sleep.  Oh, and a couple good photos!

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What should you do right after you crack some ribs?  Go bouldering at Joshua Tree National Park, of course!

At the end of our street is a wonderful path through the trees up to the sports fields at our local high school.  Last Tuesday, we took the girls up there to kick some balls around on one of the fields… and in a game of Capture the Flag, as I was running hard to get around Hannah, I hit a patch of wet grass and my feet totally went out from under me.  I landed really hard on the left side of my chest.  Where apparently I either badly bruised or cracked one or more ribs.  The next day, I went to the doctor… who essentially said that the treatment is the same whether they’re bruised or cracked (so long as there aren’t any ribs sticking out where they shouldn’t be!):  go home and suck it up.  You can’t immobilize your ribcage!  As I write this, a week later, they still hurt like heck nearly constantly, so at this point I’ve got my money on having actually cracked one or more ribs.  But we’ll see!

Meanwhile, my photography buddies Garry and Phil called to see if I wanted to join them on a super-banzai trip out to Joshua Tree National Park–out Saturday afternoon and back very late Sunday… two sunsets and one sunrise.  So why not?  I’ll be in pain wherever I am, so why not be someplace fun? Note to self:  climbing up and down boulders is particularly painful with cracked ribs!

As many years as I’ve lived here, I’d never made it out to Joshua Tree.  It was always just a little bit further than I wanted to go for a weekend trip and not high enough on the list for longer trips.  But it’s amazing!  Crazy jumbles of boulders piled on top of each other.  Saturday we hit the rock arch at White Tank, then headed over to Jumbo Rocks for sunset.  Jumbo Rocks has a big campground, that was full… full of mostly inebriated folks out randomly wandering the rocks, howling at the nearly full moon at sunset!  Or perched on top of insane rock outcroppings, where you have no idea how they actually got up there!  Sunset was beautiful, though we could have used a few more clouds!

We opted for a night in a hotel room back outside the park in Twentynine Palms, which turned out to be a brilliant plan because the wind was HOWLING that night (and if you’ve ever slept in a tent in howling wind… well, you don’t sleep much!).  At 3:15 AM we got up to head back into the park for Milky Way shots (the nearly full moon was setting at 4:05, so we’d have a little time before the sky started to lighten).  But we looked outside the window at the flag in front of the hotel, which was trying hard to get to the next county!  It was like The Weather Channel stuff during hurricane season.  So we went back to sleep for another hour.  Turns out that we probably should have gotten up.  The wind was coming and going, and perhaps we would have had enough of a break to get a few shots in.

Sunday, we did sunrise in the rocks north of Jumbo Rocks, then explored the Ocotillo gardens and Chollo gardens in the eastern side of the park, then did the loop trail at Barker Dam (nice!), before returning to Jumbo Rocks for sunset again.

It was a fun trip, if painful!

[More photos to come, as I process more of them.]

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