Getting some lucky light… Death Valley National Park
I left Lake Tahoe earlier than originally planned because of a series of snow storms that were headed that way. Given my propensity to find disaster with snow, I decided to head south via US 395 and make it down to Death Valley National Park, one of three NPs in CA that I had yet to visit (Joshua Tree and Channel Is. being the other two).
I really hauled it in the morning to get past the mountains in and around Mammouth Lakes, and relaxed a little bit once I hit Bishop, CA. I made a planned stop at Manzanar National Historical Site just south of Independence and got some pretty nice images (forthcoming at a later date). Then down to Lone Pine for a Black Rock Burger (chili + bbq and some other good things), and I stopped in the interagency visitor center to see if I could purchase my 2009 interagency public lands pass (national parks, etc.) — they didn’t have any, but the lady suggested I might want to visit the nearby Alabama Hills before heading to DVNP. I’m glad I did — pretty neat landscapes, including a couple of famous arches (photos also forthcoming).
Then I headed down towards the national park and was treated with some really nice light. The image above is from Father Crowley Point, just inside the park near Panamint Springs. Storms were rolling between the mountains and provided rainbows and some pretty dramatic late afternoon light. More from DVNP in the coming days…
