The Car Wash at Night

As I mentioned last post, I headed out to Joshua Tree for a night hike (Thursday into Friday, and drove home midday Friday). I was joined by my intrepid hiking partner and experienced Milky Way photographer JL. I'm a total newbie at astrophotography, so it's great to hike with JL, who has significant experience and know-how.

I made two big mistakes on this trip. I try to look at mistakes as learning opportunities... so a lot of learning took place on this hike😉 My first major error had to do with the temperature estimation. We were leaving 29 Palms around 5:30 PM and driving out to a remote area in the Pinto Basin. I told JL that temps in the Pinto Basin are similar to 29 Palms... probably a few degrees hotter. It was in the high 90's as we left 29 Palms, and we figured things would be cooling off as it got later in the day. I told JL it would likely be low to mid-90's when we arrive at the trail head, and cooling off as the evening progressed.

WRONG!! Big time wrong, as you can see in the photo above. After 10 miles of dusty and washboard dirt road, we finally pulled up to our hiking location. Seriously, 110 degrees at 6:35 PM??

We were hiking out to a little-known location, kept secret by those in the know, to a place called the "car wash". There is no trail. I last visited the car wash in April of 2016 (here), so it had been a while. The car wash is just that... 7-8 old rusty derelict cars that, years ago, were swept into the local wash, likely during a flash flood, and remain there to this day. There's a lot of mystery about these cars: Who owned them, what were all these cars doing out here, etc. Just questions, no answers.

My hiking partner, JL, who also happens to be excellent at navigation. No big deal while hiking during the day, but on a moonless night in the pitch black with no trail to follow, it becomes a very critical skill!

Without giving away the location, I will say that if you come across this old gate, you are on the right path! It strikes me as funny and odd... an old gate in the middle on nowhere, with no fence on either side, holding nothing in or out.

Yours truly at "the gate". Photo credit: JL

At this point on the hike, I'm keeping one eye out hoping JL is not going to throw a rock at me (or worse) for talking him into this crazy hike. It's still well into triple digits and doesn't seem to be cooling off at all.

We eventually found the "car wash". So strange... you would never in a million years expect to find old cars out here!

This area if fun to explore, because there are also old wells and a mill in the area. At one time, this location was probably providing the water and milling of ore for some of the mining operations in the Old Dale Mining District.

An old stove that has, unfortunately, been used for target practice.

Did somebody lose a funnel?? This must have been used in the mining operations. It's about 6 - 8' in height and very heavy. So bizarre to find this out in the middle of nowhere!

Another interesting find. I wonder where the rest of it is??

Big mistake #2: Overuse of "Live View" mode. So this will take a little explaining. Live View allows you to look at the photo you're taking on the camera's LCD screen. It's particularly useful for night photography. As you can imagine, putting your eye up to the viewfinder doesn't allow you to see much at night. But looking at the viewfinder can help you see what you are photographing and better frame the photo. I'm not very comfortable using Live View because I haven't used it much in the past, so I decided to use it on this outing to increase my comfort level. As the night sky finally settled in and the Milky Way became visible, here's what all my photos looked like.

Yuck! What the heck?? Extremely noisy, poor definition, and some strange colors. Very disappointing, because nearly ALL my night shots for this outing looked like this and are unusable. It totally baffled me! JL's photos were looking good, and we were using similar to identical camera settings. 

In the fine print buried deep in the camera's manual, I found my explanation. It mentions something about being careful using Live View. It can cause the camera's sensor to overheat, which will introduce lots of "noise" and strange colors. Well, that would explain it! I was using Live View extensively, and along with the triple digit ambient temps, the poor camera sensor simply overheated! Oh well, live and learn. I will never make that mistake again!

Still a lot of "noise" from the overheated sensor, but this gives you an idea of what we were hoping to accomplish. We were trying to capture some of the old rusty cars under the beautiful Milky Way.

As we hiked back to the car, my camera sensor had a chance to cool off. Ironically, my best Milky Way shot of the entire evening was just an afterthought, taking a quick photo of Old Dale Road under the Milky Way sky when we had finished our hike.

Hopefully there will be future trips to the Car Wash, and when the temps aren't so crazy hot. It's a desolate and beautiful area with some of the darkest skies in Joshua Tree National Park!

Linking with Skywatch Friday.

Thanks for stopping by!!