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I’ve been on a bit of a Swedish mystery kick recently. Just finished “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest”, after waiting months for its (English) release since finishing the second book. I got completely sucked into all three of these books. They’re very good! There’s also a movie just released in the US of the first.

While I was waiting for the final in the Stieg Larsson series, I figured I would try some other Swedish fiction – since I’m in kind of a “Scandinavia (and Greenland!) is cool phase – and read a couple of the Inspector Kurt Wallander series by Henning Mankell. I had previously read Depths by the same author quite by coincidence, but I didn’t find it at all interesting and never finished it. However, The Wallander books seemed highly recommended on the interwebs, so I thought I’d give them a chance. I’ve read the first two, and they’re OK; certainly interesting enough to finish (and maybe even buy the next in the series). But not great. They don’t keep me up nights, by any means.

I was bored this evening, and decided to go for a drive down to the PCH a little before sunset, figuring I would try to get some long ocean exposures. I think one usually tries to do these things when the moon is full, as opposed to tonight when it is barely a sliver. But I’m not particularly good at planning or patience, and I rarely regret driving to the beach through Decker Canyon, so what the heck. I think they turned out decent, anyway. After the fairly brief twilight window, though, I found myself short on light. They are all 30 second exposures. I broke my remote shutter release cable when we were at the Racetrack, and haven’t replaced it yet.

I include this final shot mostly to point out that, though they are clear as day in the picture, it was quite dark and while I was there I had no idea this couple was up on the rocks.

It is hard to find too much positive to say about the LDS church, but I can say that they have some impressive gardens at Temple Square in Salt Lake City in the Spring.

It seems I’m getting a bit flower crazy lately…

Jumping back a bit tonight to the Antelope Valley/Red Rock Canyon weekend. Before we spent the night out at Red Rock, we spent the afternoon in the Antelope Valley checking out the bright, safety-orange colored hillsides of the poppy preserve and surrounding areas. If you are in Southern California, and you haven’t seen these…well, my guess is you’ve pretty much missed it for this year. But next April you should definitely check it out. It is pretty neat.

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A few weeks ago, I and nine other adventurous souls headed back to Death Valley for the weekend. Our primary objective for the trip was to make it out to the Racetrack Playa. The playa is a large, flat surface of hardened mud, cracked into a rather appealing texture. During the winter, it often gets flooded and stays wet and muddy, but in the spring it quickly dries.

Prior to leaving, and right up to the moment at Scotty’s Castle where we decided to go for it, we questioned whether driving all the way out there in our not-so-rugged, low-clearance vehicles was a wise idea. Although I don’t usually picture myself as the conservative one, I in particular was very hesitant to drive the Prius out there, fearing vehicle damage, major hassles, or expensive towing fees when something broke. The big concern, from everything I’ve read, is that the rocks on the 27 mile long unmaintained road puncture tires; often more than one. The lady working at Scotty’s Castle, when asked, said “No way, don’t go. About once a week someone gets stranded out there and it can be $1500 to get towed out.” And I didn’t even have a full-size spare. If I had been alone, I would almost certainly not have gone; but since we had three vehicles, I figured our chances of being stranded were low, and..what the hell. So we drove nice and slow for two hours or so until we made it! Along the way we passed teakettle junction: A fork in the road where people decorate the sign with old teakettles.

Here is the view approaching the Playa from the north:

One of the cool features of the playa is the rocks that slide across it, leaving tracks in the mud that zig zag in all sorts of directions, and last for years. I’ve not heard a conclusive explanation for how they move, and as far as I know no-one has seen or recorded them moving, but I think it is some combination of wind and water pushing them across a slick, muddy surface. After it rains, a lot of water from the surrounding mountains runs down onto the playa, and I believe the winds through there can get very fast. When were first arrived, we parked up by the grandstand and ran out onto the playa. I had read that the best sliding rocks were at the southern end, so I set off walking that direction. I quickly learned that the playa is a LOT bigger than it looks. I kept walking, running, walking. When I looked back, the grandstand had gotten a lot further, but the south end did not look any closer. In the end, we gave up walking and returned to the grandstand for a bit. We then drove down to the south end, but by the time we found the good rock tracks, it was already getting very dark.

In the end, we made it in and out with no problems. I’m not quite as confident about it as Kendall is, but it was a calculated risk. I’m sure many people do have problems, and the fact that our three cars were fine does not say much about the actual odds of getting stuck with two flats. Definitely, if you are going, bring supplies (food, water, sleeping bag) to spend a couple of days/nights comfortably. I’m not sure I would do it in the middle of summer when it is deadly hot. And finally, be prepared to accept that there is some risk of a major hassle and financial costs if you are unlucky. I don’t know about other seasons, but when were out there in April, we saw at least 8 other vehicles along the way. Also, I regret that we tried to drive in and out on the same day. I would much preferred to have camped out there for the night. There is a primitive campground a couple miles south of the Playa.

This past weekend we took a drive out to the Antelope Valley to see the Poppies at the Poppy Reserve. Afterwards, we drove a bit further and spent the night at Red Rock Canyon State Park.  We didn’t get there until after dark, then we made some dinner, and I spent the rest of the night taking pictures. I started out with the Joshua Trees in the center of the campground. I think Joshua Trees are freakin’ awesome, so they are the first to get uploaded and this is dedicated to them.

I had a lot of fun, with my speedlight secured on my hip, taking a shot, reviewing, trying again. You couldn’t see much of anything in the viewfinder because it was so dark, so I had to guess and check. Most shots were several minute exposures, during which time I would experiment with manually shooting the flash off from different places. This one is a fairly short exposure (hence the black background) with a combination of two flash firings: one from above the camera, and one well off to the right.

This is from the morning after. I got up before sunrise, hoping to go hike through one of the canyons in the morning light. But the promising glow on the horizon quickly turned to an ugly gray. I had a nice morning walk though, any way.

Of course, we also saw some pretty awesome poppy fields on Saturday. Those will have to wait for another night!

In the category of “People I Envy”, I would like to introduce you to Tara and Tyler. They are traveling the world by bicycle, visiting cool places, free camping in amazing spots, cooking surprisingly good food on a white gas stove, taking lots of great photos, and even doing software development for work back home along the way. I came across their photos a while back on Flickr, and have been following them ever since. They post frequently, and I would like to thank them for it, as I enjoy reading about their adventures almost daily! They are currently headed into Eastern Europe.

I don’t know what they’re calling it, or why it is here, but for the last few days I’ve been hearing an awful lot of music and screaming coming from the mall down the hill. The traveling carnival that came through last year is back again. Simi Valley mall-goers can now finish their hard day of shopping by throwing darts at balloons and being flung upside down through the air in the parking lot! Coming home from work during the golden hour before sunset I saw it as a fun chance for photography. So I dropped my work backpack, grabbed my camera, and walked down to the mall. I walked around, took a few daylight shots, then got a coffee to kill 30 minutes and let the sun go down; I figured that a lot of well-lit spinning things might make interesting subjects.

Strangely enough, to this day, every time I see one of those “Zipper” rides I can’t help but remember riding one a ridiculous number of times one  year at the VA State Fair with this girl I really liked; we’re talking like 15 years ago or something.  It is strange how well some associations get lodged in my brain while other more important and more recent ones are forgotten.

I wonder how many people travel around from city to city with carnivals like this all year? They have quite a fleet of RVs traveling with them, which I assume is to house the people staffing it.

I had to drop Mary off at LAX early yesterday morning. As I drove out of LAX I decided to explore the neighborhood a bit since I was already up, drove all the way down there, and the sun had just come up over the horizon. Considering how long I’ve been here, I really have not seen very much of LA. I drove around the airport first, looking for an interesting vantage point for planes coming and going, but failing to find one shortly found myself next to the beach headed south. I ended up stopping in Manhattan Beach to walk around and get some breakfast. I can recommend The Local Yolk, and in particular the chorizo omelet.

The first few blocks from the beach appeared full of expensive houses with very modern architecture. I’m guessing the real estate is not cheap. It did seem like a nice place for a morning bicycle ride.

Eons ago (err…Mar 5th), an intrepid group of camera toting wilderness explorers converged on Wildrose campground in Death Valley National Park. Arriving just in time to set camp before dark, they put up their tents, lit a fire, lit their propane stoves, and began cooking lots of tasty food and tapping their mini-keg of tasty beer.

The next morning, we began our epic ascent up the snow covered mountains to Telescope peak. The road to the charcoal kilns was closed, so we hiked up the treacherous gravel road towards the kilns.

As we got higher and higher, we faced the challenging terrain of scattered snow remains…sometimes in the middle of the road. Finally we reached the kilns, making it through the bitter cold and challenging terrain. We were now only 10 miles from the peak. However, climbing the mountain is not worth your life, and we had other things to do that day, so, we resisted our summit fever and decided to head back down the treacherous gravel road, get into our suburban and drive elsewhere. However, the descent proved to be just too difficult, so we found a generous old man who would take us to the bottom in the bed of his pickup.

Once we made it back to the relative safety of the suburban, we headed out to neabry Aguereberry Point, on the recommendation of the campground hosts. Along the way, we stopped to explore the abandoned Eureka Mine, set into a hill.

Looking down from the hill that is Eureka mine, we saw a compound. This compound turned out to be Pete Aguereberry’s former home, which he occupied until 1945.  Things are surprisingly well maintained out there.

It is a bit of a fixer-upper. But it comes with appliances!

And don’t miss the lovely shed area in the back, complete with cleaning supplies by the barrel:

I guess ole’ pete left his car out in the desert as well. It was sitting 100 feet from the house, and it has seen better days.

Finally, after taking a combined total of approximately 3 million photographs of a rusty car, somebody looked over and saw a gaping hole in the side of the mountain, and said, “What’s in there?”

We poked our heads in to see what we could see, and in the entrance room we found more old rusty stuff! Incredible!

We went in as far as the light would allow, and the tunnel seemed endless. The most daring among us simply had to see where it went. So, one quick trip back to the ‘burban for some lights and in we go! It was anticlimactic, to say the least. About 20 feet in, probably 6 inches beyond what we could see without the lights, the tunnel ends uneventfully with some boxes.