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..

Day by day breakdown

The only way in my head to describe the Death valley National Park trip in pictures is to go day by day. Have finally finished processing all pictures from Day 1, uploaded the people pictures to Facebook to make the Mrs. and kids happy (they sit together at bedtime and surf facebook and this seems) and now uploading the nature stuff here. 

It does not make sense to visit death valley for a day or two. When Balaji told me we needed to take an extra day off for this plan, was initially not for it. We have never done a national park trip for more than 3 days. Then we did the internet learning and figured that 4 days in the park might just about cut it. 

It did not! We still missed a few spots after spending four full days in the park. That means the the next time we go, it has to be either :

- Rent and RV and stay inside the park or

- Stay at the one or two lodges inside the park and book it months in advance so we get a spot

We drove to a place called Ridgecrest after an 8 hour journey and rested that night. The next day (Day 1) we started at 8AM thinking that we will have time till 6PM to see things. The sun set at 4:15! We did course correct for this the rest of the trip. 

We went first to the Panamint area. There is a small store/ Visitor center with very helpful people and a very clean restroom there. You can also pickup things like moisturizers, sunscreen lotions etc.. there if you run out. 

There are beautiful views as you drive to this area

When you have a ND filter and you can do HDR.. you can almost.. almost make it look like what your eye sees.. but still it is only "almost". The human eye is the most amazing wide angle HD HDR ready thing and we usually do not realize it!

You keep walking through parched ground for a long time and 

then suddenly Darwin Falls!!!

We went on a dirt road for about a 2 1/2 miles and then went on a hike that definitely was more than a mile to see Darwin Falls ! There was lots of water flowing, considering we were in the middle of the desert and it was nice because we walked on the shade of the rock face. You are better off driving there in a Jeep or SUV instead of a minivan as your vehicle has to go real slow if it has low clearance! We did 10-15 miles / hour speeds throughout on dirt roads. 

It was really worth the effort as we got great photo ops on the way and at Darwin falls. Then we came back to the Store and had lunch.

Here is one with my two little bear cubs in a little cave! 

For comparision see bearcubs from Yellowstone many years ago..

It was already close to 1PM when we started lunch and we left the Panamint area by 2PM to go to Stovepipe Wells area.

That is almost an hours drive and we registered there at the Ranger station. That is when we were told "Sunset in an hour!". So off we went to Mosaic canyon which was the closest thing to see from the Ranger station. 

It was another 1/2 mile hike inside a canyon with smooth polished walls of marble and rocks of many colors and given that the sun was going down, it was like being in the Mckennas Gold movie! 

We have seen many canyons, but nothing like this! The kids could slide off some marble slopes.  We came out of Mosaic canyon and the sun had gone down but it was still bright out.

Started driving out of the park at 4:30 and it took us a good 2 hours plus to get back to Ridgecrest and got some fantastic views..The next day we started early amid protests from the kids! "This is a vacation, why do we have to wake up at 6 every day ?! Not fair" etc. etc. 

Wake up at 6 we did.. will share pictures from Day 2 in a few days.

A photograph can only do so much justice..

It was a great idea to go work today instead of doze off at home. No pills, visited the hot room and now feeling a lot better. 

So the thought of visiting those 3000 odd photos from last week came to mind. 

After spending 2 hours on just 6 photos calling it a night.

At the end of the day a photograph even if done in Photorealistic HDR doesn't recapture the wonder of Death Valley!

This one photo below is of the Ubehebe crater. This is a composite of 7 shots stiched together. The individual shots were taken at 17mm in portrait format on a Canon 17-40mm L lens using a ND filter in manual mode with manual focus, then cropped and adjusted. I tried pulling the whole thing off with auto exposure bracketed shots in HDR and that did not work. Guess even my Mac quits at some point..

Sure there are not that many pictures like this of Ubehebe out there. We are on a rim of a crater which is around 100 feet! you get a feel for the size of this by looking at the people on the right edge.

The ND filter kit was part of the birthday present specially for this trip. Made a big mistake. Like a person who wears spectacles for the first time forgeting the specs at odd places, I left the ND filter kit on the crater rim. 

If you happen to read this blog and fate has it that you were on that crater rim between 11/21 or thereafter and you happen to have found it.. please email me.. 

Was almost in tears when we realized this at our next stop later that evening. By that time we had already driven a good 60 miles away from the crater and visiting it again in hopes of recovering filter kit was moot!

There were few good shots with the filter in the 24 hours of use like this sunset over the freeway. We didn't realize the sun sets before 4:30 in death valley! A lot earlier than the previous day when we were out of the valley. The valley is below sea level and the lowest point in the US is right here.. should have expected that!

or this one from Mosaic canyon..

These two photos en-route to Darwin falls at Panamint area..

and finally a butterfly that was everywhere in the desert.. they were even there in the salt flats. Don't know how they survive the harsh environment. 

Learned one more thing in the editing process. The canon photo stitch utility does not work on photos taken at 17mm! So figured out how to stitch them in Photoshop. Starting to really love Photoshop now. For all that Adobe hating because of Flash Player.. there is a new found love for Adobe because of CS5!

More photos tomorrow...