Devil's Cornfield

Devil's Cornfield, Death Valley National Park, CA
Canon EOS Rebel T5i, EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO: 100, f/11, 1/125s

That's the Devil's Cornfield in the foreground, with the Mesquite Flat Dunes and the Panamint mountain range in the background.  Probably not the most exciting of shots, but I like this area of the park.

The Saltscape

Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park, CA
Canon PowerShot SX40 HS

I like the shapes that are rendered on the salt flats of Death Valley after the lake bed dries out,  The lake still fills up every once in a while  Twenty years ago it was full enough for people to venture out on canoes and kayaks,  I can't imagine how high the saline level must have been in that water.

Image selection inspired by Geogypsy's Foto Friday Fun 126, image #0047.

Rain in the Driest Place in the United States

Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park, CA
Canon Powershot SX40 HS

Technically, it is Furnace Creek in Death Valley that is considered the driest place in the United States with an average annual rainfall of  2.3 inches of rain since 1971.  I was just reading that Calexico, CA was actually drier through the first decade of this century by about a half inch a year.  Perhaps in fifty years or so we'll be calling Calexico the driest place in the US.

There have been years when it didn't rain at all in Death Valley.  There have been other years when it had rained so much people were able to go kayaking in Badwater Basin.  Here you can see rain but no kayaks.  It was somewhere in between.

Photo selection inspired by Geogypsy's Foto Friday Fun 124, Image #27.

Badwater Basin

Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park, CA
Canon PowerShot SX40 HS

I took this photo on my first trip to Death Valley.  That's rain in the hills in the background.  It doesn't rain there a lot, but it does rain.  It's obvious by how the water has shaped the landscape.  There wasn't really a storm on that day, no flooding or anything, it just came down for a few minutes here and there.

Photo selection inspired by Geogypsy's Foto Friday Fun 123, image #17.

Artist's Palette

Artist's Palette, Death Valley National Park, CA
Canon EOS Rebel T5i, 1/125s, f/8, ISO: 100

Who'd have thought plain old dirt could be so striking?  Don't miss Artist's Loop if you visit Death Valley.  It's like driving through a Road Runner cartoon.

Meep Meep.

Photo selection inspired by Geogypsy's Foto Friday Fun 115 image #7215.

Zabriski Point

Zabriski Point, Death Valley National Park, CA
Canon PowerShot SX40 HS

I love Death Valley, and one of my favorite spots is Zabriski Point.  Michelangelo Antonioni filmed a hippie orgy here in the early seventies.  Kind of a strange choice.  I was never a big Antonioni fan.

There's a big parking lot just to the left of this photo.  Truth is this picture only hints at the beauty seen from the vista to the right of this picture.  It's an easy photo op if you're in Death Valley and one that shouldn't be missed.

Photo selection inspired by Geogypsy's Foto Friday Fun 114, image #531.

Is There Life on Mars?

Natural Bridge Canyon, Death Valley National Park, CA
Canon PowerShot SX40 HS

It's not too hard to imagine this shot was taken by a Mars rover, is it?

This canyon has a lot of evidence of erosion by water, including chutes in the rocks carved out by waterfalls and of course the natural bridge that gives the canyon its name.  Hiking this canyon is like hiking back in time.  It's impossible to not try to imagine what it would have been like when water was more plentiful here.  It's also easy to imagine you're on another world entirely.

I was just reading about how some scientists now believe life started on Mars.  They're quite serious about this and it's not as crazy as it sounds.  The gist of it is that the Earth of 3.5 billion years ago or so, when life is suspected of having started, wasn't a place that would have been conducive to stringing together the right chemicals that would become the early historical stages of life.  The planet would have been covered completely in water after having been bombarded for millions of years by space debris, some of which came from Mars which itself was being bombarded.  Life probably started in a shallow pool, but a planet covered in ocean obviously can't have any pools.  Mars, on the other hand, had such things.  A meteorite or volcanic activity might have shot rocks from Mars into space (something that can happen on Mars because of its lower gravity) and those rocks might have had these early microorganisms as stowaways and one or more of these rocks might have found its way to Earth where it found the ocean and atmosphere was to its liking.  Mars would have been the place where the early complex processes of producing RNA would have occurred with natural selection driving everything once the microbes got to Earth.  That's the abbreviated I'm-not-an-expert-I-just-read-it-in-a-book version, anyway.

Science is cool.

Photo selection inspired by Geogypsy's Foto Friday Fun 109, photo #168.

Mosaic Canyon

Mosaic Canyon, Death Valley National Park, CA
Canon PowerShot SD770 IS

I've posted a few pictures from Mosaic Canyon over the last week.  That's mostly by coincidence.  Not entirely, though.  After all, this is one of my favorite places to take a hike and it lends itself well to photography.  Death Valley is one of the few places I know of where one can be out in the wilderness and not see another living thing--not even a blade of grass--in all directions as far as can be seen.  That might sound like something awful but it's just the opposite.

Selection inspired by Geogypsy's Foto Friday Fun 107, photo #2607.

Solitude

Mosaic Canyon, Death Valley National Park, CA
Canon PowerShot SX40 HS

Death Valley is quiet.  It's not silent.  When the wind blows hard, it makes a lot of noise, but it's like white noise.  Wind may make noise through the trees, but it also makes noise when there's nothing to blow through.  I've been there when the wind was blowing sixty miles an hour and I've been there when there was no wind to speak of, and if you need to get away and find yourself Death Valley is as good a place to go as any in either scenario.  The difference between quiet and silent is easily understood there.  It's the same kind of difference as being alone and being lonely.

Marble Walls

Mosaic Canyon, Death Valley National Park, CA
Canon EOS Rebel T5i, 1/125s, f/11, ISO: 100

A better picture of the marble walls of the Mosaic Canyon's slot section seemed to be in order after yesterday's muddled photo.  This is an easy and rewarding hike that should not be missed.

Canyon Walls

Mosaic Canyon, Death Valley National Park, CA
Canon PowerShot SD 770 IS

You want a slot canyon?  You want it made out of what?  Sandstone?  Hell no!  This is Death Valley, Baby,  Death Valley uses marble polished smooth by the gravel and grit in the flash floods that have carved the canyon.  That's just how Death Valley rolls.

Mosaic Canyon is one of my favorite places in the world.  Hiking up the slot canyon is a nice, easy hike with a couple of minor scrambles.  It eventually opens up into a wide, colorful canyon with a number of areas for exploration.  This photo was taken from just below the mouth of the slot canyon.  I have no idea what I was actually trying to capture with this photo.  It's kind of a mess.

Photo selection inspired by Geogypsy's Foto Friday Fun 106, photo #2694,

The Bottom of the Continent

Death Valley National Park, CA
Canon PowerShot SX40 HS, 1/1250s, f/5, ISO: 160

Death Valley wasn't always a dry desert.  The valley floor was once a large, deep lake.  At its largest, it was roughly eighty miles long, six miles wide and six hundred feet deep at its deepest point.  It's known as Lake Manly, and it made a brief return in 2004 after a severe storm.  It only averaged a couple of feet in depth, but it covered most of the valley floor and people were actually able to kayak from one side of the valley to the other.  Wouldn't that have been something to experience?

Today there's a large aquifer beneath Death Valley.  That's why there are always pools of water at Badwater Basin and other places in the valley.  I believe the water in this picture springs from the aquifer as well.

Salt Creek

Salt Creek Interpretive Trail, Death Valley National Park, CA
Canon EOS Rebel T5i, 1/125s, f/10, ISO: 100

Looking at this photo, it's more of an establishing shot than anything else.  I mean, if this blog was a movie or something.  What would the story be, though?

Hmmm.

It would probably have something to do with the salt creek pupfish.  They're pretty fascinating.  The salt creek pupfish are only found in this creek (although there are other species of pupfish that live in other nearby water sources) and can only be seen in the Spring when the creek is high.  Keep in mind this is Death Valley, so when we say the creek is running high what that means is it isn't completely dry.  The source of the creek's water is an underground spring, which is where the pupfish spend the bulk of their lives, as well as the year round pools that can be found upstream of the boardwalk (there's a trail you can follow and it's park ranger-approved).  As you might have guessed, the creek is salty.  The pupfish are adapted to the high salinity.  Stating the obvious, I guess.

Salt Creek Pupfish -- Salt Creek, Death Valley National Park, CA
Canon EOS Rebel T5i, EF-S 55-250mm IS II, 1/1600s, f/5.6, ISO: 320

Inspired by Geogypsy's Foto Friday Fun 98, photo #6545.

Rainbow Canyon

Rainbow Canyon, Death Valley National Park, CA
Canon PowerShot SD770 IS, 1/125s, f/8, ISO: 80

I doubt that there are many rainbows in Death Valley.  There is, however, Rainbow Canyon, which gets its name from the color of its walls rather than a preponderance for actual rainbows.

If you're approaching Death Valley from the West, Rainbow Canyon is the first dramatic feature of the park that you will encounter.  It's an impressive start, but it's merely the appetizer.  Death Valley is chock full of wonder.  If I had to pick a single park as my favorite, I wouldn't hesitate to choose Death Valley.  Luckily I don't have to make that choice.  Every park I've visited is special in some way.

I took this with my little SD770.  I can't wait to get back there with my Rebel and wide angle USM lens.

Cottonwood Mountains

Cottonwood Mountains, Death Valley National Park, CA
Canon Power Shot SX40 HS, 1/200s, f/4, ISO: 160

Before buying an entry-level DSLR, I shot for a year with a Power Shot SX40, which is a point-and-shoot with a 40x zoom lens.  It was a step up in terms of complexity from my Power Shot SD770, which is one of those little pocket-sized cameras.  The SD770 took nice photos and it's what originally got me into photography.  I shot mostly on auto with the SD770 and learned how to manipulate the exposure settings by angling the camera differently against the sky.  That knowledge transferred to the  SX40, but the SX40 had a bigger lens and was much smarter with how it handled the light.  It was also faster with less delay between the pushing of the button and the firing of the shot.

I have a a Rebel T5i now.  It's interesting, I get better pictures with it--it's smarter, faster and I'm starting to understand how to manage exposures manually--but I also throw away a lot more pictures.  That's partially because I've become more fussy with image quality but it's also because I take more shit pictures with the Rebel.  Both of the Power Shots took more consistently acceptable photos.  The SX40 also had better reach than my 250mm lens, which is the longer of my two lenses.

What's the point and what does it have to do with this picture of the Cottonwoods?  I'm not sure, really.  I suppose as I encounter these older photographs I'm pleasantly surprised with how well Power Shots handled themselves.  I wouldn't want to give up my DSLR.  If nothing else, it's simply more fun to use.  Finding just the right settings is sometimes a challenge, but it's also rewarding.  The Power Shots took some nice ohotos, though, I don't regret taking my time moving from the SD770 to the SX40 to the Rebel.

Blah, blah, blah.  I hope you enjoyed today's photo.  It's one of my favorite places to visit.

Roadways: Highway 190

California State Route 190, Death Valley National Park, CA
Canon Power Shot SX40 HS, f/4, ISO: 100

There are roads and then there are roads.  Some drives are just special.  Highway 1 in Big Sur and  Highway 12 in Utah are probably my two favorite stretches of road, at least that I've driven over the last few years.  Eastern California has a couple of gems.  Highway 395 runs North/South along the back side of the Sierras and Highway 190 runs through Death Valley.

This shot is Highway 190 as it descends 5000 feet from Towne Pass to Stovepipe Wells.  Those clouds in the sky actually dropped a bit of rain on this particular day.