Death Valley Trip Part 2

More Photos

The Sunday morning is our last day in Death Valley. Everyone was excited about Zabriskie Point, it is an elevated overlook of a colorful landscape of mud hills at the edge of the Funeral Mountains. The scenery is best at sunrise therefore we pick the spot for our last sunrise shots for this trip. We almost missed the sunrise so I was driving really fast to beat the sun. We got there around 6:15am and I quickly ran over the edge of the view point and started my setup. After a good 30 minutes shooting, Patrick suggested we shoot do a group pictures. So I told him to setup the camera, he was slow and we waited 10 minutes for him.

Finally, we headed back to the Inn and get ready to visit Mosaic Canyon. It was close by to where we stayed about 15 minutes away. We got there and started to hike the Canyon with our heavy equipment. Only the first quarter mile offers good photography so I don’t bother to go any further. On the way back I met a couple photographers, they were using large format. It was interesting, one guy wearing a reflective cape and I was wondering is he shooting aliens?

Mosaic Canyon was our last leg in Death Valley and everyone can’t wait to get back to Vegas to have a nice meal and do some shopping. Especially me, I am very picky about food. We got back to Vegas around 2:15pm. We stopped in the new LV Premium outlets, and I brought some t-shirt in FCUK. Surprisingly, it was more tired in a 1 hour shopping than a 1.5 hrs Sand Dune hike. I told Cherry shopping is not for guy hiking is!

We still had about 3 hrs before we need to check-in in the airport, so Patrick suggested visiting Wynn Casino. The only impress me in Wynn is the waitress, other than that it just a casino for rich people.
We got to the airport around 6:30pm.

Death Valley Trip Part 1

More Photos

This is our semi-annual major photography outing. Specially thanks to Henry Wong to plan this trip and Steve Kossack’s DVD.

The Death Valley trip began an early Friday (3/23/2007) morning flight to Las Vegas. I took the 7:15am UA flight to meet the guys in Vegas. After we got our rental car then we headed to eat dim sum for our first meal. We ate some awful dim sum and got our water for our trip in Ranch 99.
We made our way to Death Valley from LV (I slept most in that 2 hrs drive). Death Valley is different from what I expect in article, TV, or my though because the word "Death". It reminds me of Grand Canyon. After we check-in the Inn in Stovepipe Wells, we rested a little and started to head to Racetrack for sunset photos. We finally made it out to Racetrack Playa after a 2.5 hrs rough drive. We were off road most of the time and it was a fun driving. We finally got there and lucky it was not sunset yet so we had some time to explore the site. The hugeness and the flatness of the playa are breath taking. The most interesting thing in Racetrack is rocks slide across the ground, and it’s the wind blowing through the canyon that makes them move. You can tell it moved by the mud track trails behind some rocks. We had fun and we had dust all over ourselves. We headed by to the Inn by 9:30pm and all the restaurant were closed in Death Valley, therefore no dinner for Friday night, just beers.



We woke up at 4:30am and get ready to our sunrise destination Bad Water. Bad Water is the lowest point in North America being 282 feet below sea level. Temperatures in here can range from up to 130 degree in the summer to below freezing at night in the winter. The evaporated water leaves a dry and interesting salt formation on the ground. We took a lot of pictures in here until the sun was get too bright for good pictures.


We left around 8am and move on to our next photo spot “Devils Golf Course”. The towering columns of salt stretch for what seem like miles in this devil’s golf course. I carefully walked around and took some photos on these interesting strange rock hard formations from the ground. It was getting hot about 80 degree and I was hungry so I ask the folks to leave and get some lunch. We ate lunch buffet in Furnace Creek Ranch then headed back to Inn to get some rest.


The next photo spot is Sand Dune. We hike about 40 minutes under the hot sun and created our own trail along the hike. The dunes are most photogenic area in Death Valley so it was worth all the hard work and sweat. By the time we finish it was already dark. We hiked back to our car under moonlight. It could be very romantic if I was not with a bunch of dudes. We did a lot on this Saturday, it was somewhat painful but it was fun and good experience meeting the Death.