Glaciers, Cliff faces and cloud covered mountains..

Well, someday I will sit down and write a book about the drive from Anchorage to Seward, but today will leave  you with select pictures. . 

The railroad goes parallel to the highway and close to the water edge. Next time we will definitely go by rail on this same route. Folks we met who had come to Seward on the train said that they stop the train every now and then when any whale sightings happen! 

Apparently the purchase of Alaska from Russia for less than 8 Million dollars way in those days was called the "Seward folly" as people of that day thought "what a waste of good money to buy a land so desolate just because it has a few natural resources".

The place below reminded me of Jurassic Park. Apparently the 9+ earthquake that wiped out Seward in the sixties, originated here and triggered a massive tsunami! Time does heal things.. the place was teeeeeeming with life.

Mr. Seward, I am glad you bought that land and made most of it National parks and sincerely hope that the money minded politicians of today don't sell this back to Russia for a few million again in return for crude. 

The glaciers were a sight to behold. The boat crew fished out a few ice chunks and I got to taste Glacial ice water. Don't know why Global warming so difficult to comprehend for most Americans. What is the loss of a glacier or two, if you are never going to see them in your lifetime?! 

We saw this one break off a huge piece and crash into the water with a thundering sound right in front of our eyes.

Tried to take a few HDR shots of the glacier by stabilizing camera on Boat's side rail. It works as long as the boat is not moving too fast and you are set to a fast shutter speed, high ISO and f >14 (just a tip!).

 

After seeing the Glaciers, the boat took us to one last spot. The captain gave it a lot of hype as a potential "National Geographic Moment". In order to be ready for this I asked one of the crew, what is he talking about and the answer was "he is going to show you a place where Puffins nest on the rock face. It is a rare sight!".  If you have been photographing all day switching lenses back and forth on a moving boat where you can't feel your hands anymore in the cold, what would you do? I switched to the long 400x setup to catch a puffin or two on a rock, given a puffin is a small bird. 

Was totally not prepared for the beautiful scenery that unfolded in an area called the "spires". By the time I switched to a wide angle the boat had moved into the spires. Was hoping he would go back the same way he came, but nope. Ended up on the other side of the boat. Definitely going back to see them at close range on the next trip.

It was indeed a National Georgaphic moment! 

Death Valley trip Panoramas

Day 4 trip photos are here..

Day 5 of the trip was our return from Ridgecrest to San Jose with a stop at Lake Isabella for 15 minutes to enjoy the serene waters. There were two other vehicles there and the rest of the way we did not cross a single vehicle on either side for almost a good 20 miles!

It was a beautiful drive along the Kern river which at places was moving rapidly and having calm waters to catch reflections of mountains.

These stitch shots are actually really large. Each of them is ~ 100 Mb and the originals are 12000 to 16000 pixels wide by 3000 to 5500 pixels in length. Have resized them to a 1200 pixel max width for the website. 

They were all made by composite merging 8-21 photos all taken in portrait orientation while panning the landscape in full manual mode with the same setting for all the photographs. 

An example is below:

You get one gigantic image from which you crop the right section and play with it to get this...

Plan to print one of these as a 8 foot by 2 foot poster which should still be good at 96dpi ! 

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. We sure will go back and look at these pictures as our new screensaver.

Would definitely recommend an extra day or two for Death valley trips to enjoy the Kern river, the lake etc. on the way in and see other things like Titus canyon, Racetrack Playa etc. 

Knowing what we know now, next time we will probably stay inside death valley at the expensive furnace creek inn for at least two of the 5 days and will be renting a jeep in advance!

Death Valley Day 4

You have seen the trip details and photos from Day 3..

We did spend a 4th day at Death Valley as a grand finale of sorts.

Did the two hour drive from Ridgecrest early in the morning but with a lot of stops to take pictures on the way of the desert landscape and the valley views. We had reserved this activity for the last day as we rushed past these features every morning.

Then we went to the Badwater Basin! It was the farthest point for us on the last day at Death Valley and our plan was to cover as many spots as possible on our way back to Stovepipe wells.

The old chinese workers at the borax mines tried to make their horses drink the water that was collected in shallow pools but the horses or mules would not drink. So they called it badwater and the name stuck. 

In reality the water is so saturated with salt that it is not potable! Given that, it creates such scenic beauty as it leaves salt to dry in ring like sediments, after some point the salt crystals push out of the ground like seeds germinating and have crystalline patterns that literally emerge from the ground. The sun makes this all the more spectacular and the reflections of the mountains is some sight to behold.

After walking around Badwater we headed to another place that is so unique it is aptly named "Devils Golf Course".. Caked earth, salt deposits, sharp edges that make you worry that you will cut youself to death if you fall on the ground..

It was interesting to say the least. We went back for lunch at Furnace Creek visitor center again and started driving to something that promised guaranteed fun if the brochures were to be taken seriously...

We came to Natural bridges! It was a long walk and it ended at a point where we could not go further but we got some unforgettable memories on this trail. The sun cast shadows that turned the canyon from orange, to red to yellow to purple and the camera was clicking non stop.

At some point I just stopped clicking, sat on a rock, took a deep breath and absorbed the whole thing. Then packed up and started walking to catch up to San, BB and the kids. 

If and when I retire, soooo going back to this place to spend a day in the shade sitting on one of those rocks and watching the sun go by! 

After a reality check that retirement was far away, we drove to Artist Point or Artist Pallette as people call it. The rocks and the minerals within them have been exposed by water erosion and the mountains are glowing in colors! We saw a shade of this at Zabriske point on Day 3, but this was way more colorful. Almost spent two hours on this drive at various vista points. The moon comes out close to 2PM and we had some fun taking photographs with the moon in the background!

The sad thing is that the best views are closer to the exit on this drive than on the entrance side. We spent way too much time climbing a little hill where everyone had parked their car only to realize that the really colorful spots were further down the drive! Still, made it through just as the sun set and we came out of the park with some great memories..

Day 5 saw us driving back from Ridgecrest.. We stopped on the way at a few scenic spots .. a lake, a river.. Those pictures are processed as are all those stitch shot panoramas. Will post the last photoblog from Death Valley trip tomorrow!

Death Valley Day 3

Somewhere in the last ten days the daily one hour commit to photo editing before going to bed took a backseat on the priority list. Got a break yesterday evening when it was cold and raining out and the kids and me ended playing "name place animals things" at home.

We also started on a 500 piece puzzle which was messed up by the little one after we had almost assembled 50 plus pieces to connect because she got "fursrated".. she almost says it like "firstrated"! We might start that again as long as no pieces were damaged. 

Managed to edit Day 3 photos. Two more days of photos to edit still left!

For previous photos and trip description go here..

Day 3 saw us going straight to the Kilns through the Wildrose entrance of Death Valley national park. These are some magnificent structures built hundreds of years ago to make charcoal from local wood. They must be easily 25+ feet tall as the entrance is close to 6 feet. You end up driving through a dirt road and it is better if you have a Jeep. We were all praying that no big rocks hit our vehicle as it is pretty desolate out there and there are no cell signals.

After the Kilns we headed straight to see the salt creek. There is a nice wood path (that reminded us of the Petroglyph trail in Hawaii)  and you can walk it in 30 minutes or less and you can see the creek run by, small fish, birds if you are lucky and a lot of butterflies.. not to mention the vast expanse of salts.

We continued in the same direction and went to the Borax works next. Borax was the main thing folks mined from the salts. So they figured out it was easier to refine the borax locally and haul it in mule wagons instead of taking raw material across the desert.

Now of course all this is gone because there are deposits outside death valley that are thriving and have more elaborate mines. At some point there were thousands of tents on the vast expanse in front of this wagon exhibit that sits in the middle of nowhere.. mostly Chinese migrant workers!

After this the plan was to go to Golden Canyon. We saw a coyote that we almost ran over as it crossed the road! There was no one else on that road and why it chose to cross just in front of us is beyond me.

We went for a hike through Golden Canyon as far as we could go which was a mile and a quarter. San and the girls decided to stop halfway and return while the two and a half men went on! The sun was almost directly over us and the previous experiences of walking in a shade within the canyon were not applicable. 

There were no clouds either. So the sky was a nice plain blue but the photos came out with "something missing"!

After this it was a drive back to Furnace creek visitor center for lunch. There is an auditorium there that plays a video of what to see at Death Valley at regular intervals. We caught that video and spent some time looking at the nice displays in the Visitor center. After that it was  a race with the sun to go see Dante's View and Zabriske point right before sunset.

We saw some of the most fantastic views ever at these two places. You can see the highest and lowest point in the continental US from this place on a clear day and we had a clear day! What you see below is an expanse of salt called the Badwater Basin. 

The sun was going down sooo fast! We caught some amazing hues on the rocks..

Unforgettable views!

Wanted to stay there for a long time just to admire what mother nature had created over millions of years, but the 20 odd cars that were there started dispersing fast and it got dark very fast and we started down from Zabriske point..

We had one more day at the park to cover some more must see spots.. It only got better on the last day!

Day 2 at Death Valley

On day 1 we had covered Panamint area (Darwin falls, Panamint Valley road) and had headed to Stovepipe wells to see Mosaic Canyon just at Sunset and turned back.

Day 2 saw us heading straight to Scotty's Castle. A real Spanish Castle built in the middle of the desert during the gold rush years. A gold rush triggered by a fraud Scotty!

You can go read about it here.. 

They continue his conman tradition by collecting tickets at the door and then telling you "No backpacks, no Tripods as we cannot let anything tip over in the castle". They also have strict rules on where you can walk in the castle and have the original expensive rugs from the 1920's covered in plastic. 

So it was a challenge taking photos inside.. and Balaji told me "Imagine if you could do this in HDR!".. so I did try this with some high ISO settings and used a gun hold to steady myself on the ground for every exposure bracketed series of shots while the tour guide and the rest of the gang would wait for me. The guide did not want to leave me out of her sight and I was a royal pain for her... but hey, didnt pay those bucks for the entrance if we were not going to get pictures, right?!

Here are some photos from the Castle trip. The rest are in the Galleries either under HDR or under Architecture..

Inside the castle it was pretty dark and so you can imagine trying to get shots with 1/60 as the over exposed setting with as large an f-stop as possible to capture @17mm!

and finally my favorite. BB had the idea to take this shot and had set up the kids and there were all about to walk out of the building! The guide lady was pushing me to finish my last shots inside the building as she wanted to lock up the castle behind me (it was Thanksgiving day and we were pretty much the only group there!) and that is when I saw the kids still staring up.. Had to photoshop BB and the tour lady's feet from the staircase but it was worth the time..

After Scotty's we went to Ubehebe crater  which was a visual treat. Took a lot of shots to do stitch work. 

Here is a sample ..

This is made from nine 30 MP images taken with the camera in Portrait orientation and merged in Photoshop where my shadow was cropped out..

Previous example (already in earlier post) is this one..

Then we went to Titus canyon and went on a trail outside the canyon by mistake. After going a mile with no shade in sight we came back and realized our mistake. Then decided to go in for a short hike in the right direction and took pictures. It was late by then.

So we cut it short and had lunch at Stovepipe Wells store which is great because there is a nice store, gas station and an area in the shade where you can eat your home cooked food and nice restrooms. What more can you ask for in the middle of the desert next to a bunch of sand dunes?

After lunch we went to the dunes. It was already 3 PM by then. The kids, having got their energy back raced into the Mesquite dunes and had the time of their life! Even today they tell us that the best part of the trip was playing in the dunes.. We need to find some dunes closer to home.

Another interesting thing about death valley. At 3PM it will be 76 F. By 4:15 it will drop to 70 and by 5:30 it will drop to 52 F. It drops rapidly in a 2 hour span.  We learned our lesson on day one and started wearing full sleeve shirts for the rest of the trip to avoid sun burn and the chills!

We thought of catching the sunset at some view point on the way back.. but my birthday dinner at Denny's could not be postponed and off we went on our long ride back to civilization.

The travelog will continue..