The Old Truck at Night

 This old truck is a real mystery. It's a good 2 miles from the nearest highway, and how it got to this location before getting stuck in the sand is anyone's guess. It looks like a Ford F150, and I first posted about it here back in December of 2020. 

 

My goal for today's hike is simple: Hike to the old truck, arrive an hour or so before sunset. Use that hour to explore some of the local boulder formations, then wait for the stars to rise. I have never visited the old truck at night, and I'm thinking it might look cool under the stars!

Hello, old friend!

 

We are "upstream" in the wash where the old truck is located. That's a Smoke Tree on the left. If we follow this wash "downstream" for a ways, we will eventually come to the old truck. It's certainly possible that a massive thunderstorm pushed the truck down this wash for a long distance.

 

 

Interesting boulder formations not far from the old truck.

 

Possible shelter.

 

Inside, looking out.

 

 

I didn't try to crawl into this one for fear of being swallowed!

 

Desert Milkweed

 

 

Blurry Milkweed bug and seedpod (sorry, the wind was blowing!).

 

Looks like a bad case of tooth decay!

 

This boulder is split in half, then somehow pulled apart.

 

 

The Belt of Venus.

 

The sun has set on the old truck, but it's still hitting the peaks of the Coxcomb Mountains in the background.

 

Moonset over the old truck.

 

The thing that looks like a UFO coming in for a landing is actually the moon!

 

This was the photo of the truck at night I was hoping to get. The moon (just out of the frame) makes it harder to see the individual stars, but they are visible if you look closely. You can also see the shadow cast by the moon. I've placed two small LED lights in the cab of the truck to make things interesting.

 

Starting the 2-mile hike back to my car. Can you guess what that dome of light is on the horizon?? The view is N/NE. At about 10-15 miles is the Sheephole Valley Wilderness. Nothing but desert (no lights). Beyond that at about 60-70 miles is the Mojave National Preserve (again, just desert, no lights). Finally, at about 140 miles from where I'm standing, you hit Las Vegas and suburbs. LOTS OF LIGHTS!! I'm pretty sure that's what we are seeing here. Nothing else it could be. Light pollution has a huge impact and travels many miles.

 

Thanks for stopping by!!

Linking with Skywatch Friday.

Out and About in the Hidden Valley Area

 It's been years since visiting what I call "stamp rock" in Joshua Tree National Park.

If my memory can be trusted (probably not!), I seem to recall the artist took some liberties with that large Joshua tree. Either he added it just to enhance the painting, or it was there at the time but has long since fallen over and disappeared. I thought I knew right where stamp rock was, but as it turned out, I didn't, and Mitch and I did a lot of hiking around the Hidden Valley area of Joshua Tree National Park before finally finding it. That's OK, there's lots to see!

 

Toothy grin! Can you guess what the white stuff is on the "teeth"? That's climbers chalk. They put it on their hands to help them grip the rock.

 

Delicate balance!

We came across some incredible pictographs, although not in this area. I'm sharing it here so as not to give away its true location.

 

 

 

 

Old dam built by the early ranchers. And thanks to recent rain, it was full of water. What a nice surprise!

 

 

Alien Rock!!

And finally we found it... stamp rock!! But if you look closely and compare it to the stamp, it's definitely the same rock formation, but it's inverted. Like looking at a mirror image. Very strange!

 

So I used Photoshop to flip the image horizontally, and I used AI to add a Joshua Tree. Now if you compare this to the stamp, there is no doubt this is the rock formation the artist used for inspiration. Pretty cool!

 

Later that evening, enjoying the stars.

 

Until next time!!

 

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A Winter Day at the Beach

 I took my granddaughter and her two besties to the beach in late January (and just realizing I never posted any photos!). I remember thinking it should be really nice. The temperature was quite warm for January. I like winter beach days... no crowds, easy to find parking, and beach traffic is light. But as we headed down Beach Blvd. and got within about 1/4 mile of Pacific Coast Highway, my hopes for a "have-the-beach-all-to-ourselves" kind of day was shattered. Traffic was backed up for some reason, and when I finally got to PCH, traffic was at a standstill. I did a quick u-turn and pulled into the Huntington State Beach lot, and as I paid my $20 to park, I asked the lady what was going on. She chuckled and said something about a "trifecta": Huntington Beach Marathon, a vintage car show, and a surf competion. So much for our quiet winter day at the beach!

A gorgeous day at the beach (Huntington Beach pier in the background).

 

 The vintage VW buses were fun to see. Most appeared to be renovated down to the tiniest detail. Beach Boys music was blasting out of one of the vans. It transported me back to my childhood, growing up in S CA in the 60's!

 

The girls walking down to the pier.

 

 

 

 

Catalina Island on the horizon.

 

 

 

 

 

As if the sunset wasn't enough of a show, the full moon was rising and putting on its own show in the opposite direction. It took me about 15 tries before capturing this seagull flying by under the moon!

 

Watching the sun drop behind Catalina Island. It turned out to be an amazing winter day at the beach, crowds and all, and one that I think the girls will remember for a long time!

 

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Lunar Eclipse

 I'm late. But I have a good excuse. The lunar eclipse was back on March 3rd, about two weeks ago. So what took me so long? I set my alarm for  2:45AM. Ideal viewing time for totality was predicted to be from 3am - 4am. I used an app on my phone to figure out where the moon would be located at 3am (luckily it would be high enough on the horizon that I could set up in the back yard and shoot over my roof). Then I set up my camera with telephoto lens (100mm - 400mm) on the tripod in the dining room, so when I stumbled out of bed at 2:45am, I could just carry it out to the back yard. 

At 2:50, exposing for the brightest part of the moon,  it looked like a crescent moon.

 

Slowly the redish moon became visible as the eclipse proceeded, with the bright white non-eclipsed area at the bottom. Even if you didn't look at the moon, you would know something was going on. The light looked different... perhaps more reddish from the moon, and darker? It was about this time the coyotes started yipping and howling. Very cool. Even the coyotes knew something was different!

 

Getting the right exposure was a challenge because the non-eclipsed area at the bottom was bright and overpowering. 

 

Near totality, but not quite.

 

 

About as close to totality as I could get.

  

I took this photo in May of 2022. A better example of totality, with no white light visible.

 

I tried to get tree branches in the photo, but they were quite dark and hard to see.

 

By now, it was almost 4am, and I was ready to go back to bed. I got up a few hours later and showed my wife and granddaughter some of the moon photos using the camera display. Later that morning I removed the memory card from the camera and pluged it in to the card reader connected to my laptop to do some editing, and this is where things got weird. MY MOON PHOTOS WERE GONE. I could see earlier photos from a previous outing on the memory card (so I knew the card reader was working), but no moon photos. I tried putting the memory card back in the camera: Still no moon photos. I tried plugging my card reader into my wife's laptop: Still no moon photos. How could they just disappear like this???

 

After doing a little research, it turns out there are a number of file recovery programs out there (which makes me think files must go missing from these memory cards on a regular basis). I tried running one, but no luck. A second and third try with different programs also was unsuccessful. I even called a computer repair store (figuring they do hard drive file recovery), but they wanted $200, with no guarantee that my moon photos would be recovered. Um, no thanks. I gave up. A week later, I purchased new SanDisk memory cards so as to avoid this happening again. Opening a new card, I notice an offer for "free download of RescuePro" file recovery software. On a whim, I downloaded and ran the program. Like magic, there they were!! All my moon photos were recovered. A happy ending to the story, and good justification for for my late lunar eclipse post!

 

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