Rising moon

We woke up the next morning at around 4h30 AM, early enough to catch dawn and the sunrise.

We decided to drive back to the dunes and boy was it the best decision we made! First we were greeted by a setting thin moon crescent. What a treat! We were expecting a moonless night but apparently we were off by one day… Never so happy to be wrong! Setting up the tripod, I was lucky enough to catch this beauty.

And then we just walked up the dunes again. Nothing beats the immensity one feels when climbing a sand dune. I believe it has to do with how they refer us back to the fragility of life… Nature can turn entire seas and countries into sand… And the all mighty man can’t stop it… One can’t help but feel humble by such force and beauty.

So all we did is just take in the beauty, basking in the slowly rising sun. These moments were amongst my favourites of this entire trip. The landscape was changing by the second, mountains turning red, then blue… The sun was firing the dunes and warming us. For a second there, I felt completely out of time.

Hope you’ll like the pictures… As always, your comments are most welcome.

Next post: hitting the backcountry roads. Happy Monday everyone!

Btw, we won the first round of the series in hockey... Wouhou!! H.

Of Dunes and Star

After about 10 minute drives, the Mesquite dunes appeared to us in the distance, big, beautiful, majestic. We arrived from ‘’behind’’, the dunes already darkened by the setting sun. Seeing soft, white sand felt good and we could not resist the urge to try our luck and drive off road. The trail was unfortunately too soft for us, little inexperienced drivers, so we had to get back on the normal road. We did make time for a little pit stop to feel the sand on our feet.

Although a big thrill this was – fantastic reminiscence of my previous trip to Egypt – better excitement soon came to as we continue on the road and drove closer to the Dunes. The road actually takes you directly next to then. You can park you car on the side and it’s a small 5mn walk to the first, smaller dune.

Since the sun was already low, I stopped myself on the first dune and quickly set up my tripod to start shooting. Unfortunately, he light was not as good as I had expected. The surrounding mountains quickly hid the sun. Although I got some fairly decent shots, the interest at that time was actually the fantastic colours of the mountains. Never before had I seen red, orange or purple summit.

I kept wondering where these dunes came from. All dunes in Death Valley are created by the accumulation of loos sediments coming for erosion of surroundings rocks. Block by the surrounding mountains – Amargosa Range to the east, Panamint Range to the west, Sylvania mountain to the south and Owlshead to the north - these particles just fall in a particular place when an obstacle is to big to be surmounted. It takes years and years of windstorm to create sand dunes like the one seen in Mesquite.

As the sun lay even lower behind the mountain, my partner and I started to feel the shortness of the previous night… As our stress level diminished, fatigue was more and more pleasant. We then decided to drive to Immigrant campground – a small, free camping ground just about 10 miles from the Mesquite Dunes, only to find it already full. With only about 8 spot, that was to be expected, even so early in the season. To tired to drive further away on one of the many back roads, we decided to settle in the Stovepipe ‘city’ camping ground.

With a big, beautiful star filled sky above us, we quickly fell asleep. Too bad the night was going to be short…

By the way: it’s hockey fever here in Montreal and, well, it’s taking a toll on my writing habits… Hopefully I’ll be more consistent next week! ;-)

H.