There has to be a God because man is not smart enough to create such diversity in the landscape and its inhabitants!
A picture sometimes stands as a reminder for an entire trip...
This picture does it for us!
Will update this post and pictures and videos over the next few weeks.. Have 1200 + rough photos to edit and check out!
Tonight we sleep when it is dark outside. The last four days it was light out till Midnight!
Here is to life..
We went on a day trip to Pinnacles National park (Monument as it is called) with the cousins. The weather report said 85 F and we thought it would be nice weather to go on a 2+ mile hike and maybe another 2+ mile hike.
The park website promised interesting views, including a network of bat caves.
The first trail to Bear Gulch was great. The rock faces were really colorful..
we got to descend into the caves through narrow crevices and the temperature drop was a palpable 30+ degrees. There is water running under those caves and it is really cool down there!
It was not easy to take pictures without a tripod but the bouncing lights off the water and rocks did make for some interesting pictures!
We were hit by 106 F heat as we exit the caves through a near vertical staircase carved into the side of the caves. It truly reminded me of the Batman movie when we looked up towards the exit!
Poor bats, no wonder they are blind. We were blinded for a few seconds when we went from nice cool darkness to scorching heat and bright sunlight!
We went on to see a beautiful resevoir which was abuzz with all types of dragonflies!
and one type of butterfly in the 100's or thousands! This guy posed for me without realizing it. Caught him with a 400 mm Zoom (which is why the background is all Bokeh'ed out).
It was an enjoyable trip. Next time we shoud hit it earlier in the year when peak temperatures are closer to 70's or 80's. The park pamphlet promises views of great falls and rock formations, but guess those are longer hikes and will have to wait till the adults are in better shape. The kids seem to be doing fine with the trails.
Even the little one managed to walk for 4 hours with a countable "daddy, please thooki(carry) me!" instances.
Will definitely recommend this place for day trip.
ps. Apparently the caves will be closed soon for bat baby season.. so check before you go.
pps. Take a flashlight. It is dark in those caves and another visitor in front of us said they saw snakes in the caves which is not surprising. We used one flashlight and one iPhone app to navigate the caves. Two or three flashlights would have been better.
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!
Copyright © 2012, Sundar Narayanan. All rights reserved.