Another image from our adventures back in the summer of 2013 when my son, Jonathan and I were on a week long adventure trip in our brand new Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. The day started out in Lone Pine and based on weather forecasts, we decided it might be a good sunset/Milky Way opportunity at the Racetrack in Death Valley NP. We headed out late in the afternoon and decided that the normal route via Ubehebe Crater/Racetrack Valley Rd would take too long (153 miles). Further review of the maps revealed an alternate shorter route (~72 miles) via Lippincott Rd that looked doable from a distance standpoint. Little did we know the mischief we were getting ourselves into. This 8.2 mile stretch of road started out fairly innocuously but soon turned into something well above our pay grade level considering we had the jeep for just over a month and had very limited off roading experience. Needless to say, it was a truly gut wrenching, heart pounding experience but our stock Rubicon managed the encounter with flying colors. For a close up experience with this road check out some of the videos others have posted on YouTube. It is also listed as one of the dangerous roads on dangerousroads.org.
In memory of Geroge's Tree by Owen's River (Bishop, CA) here is a poem by ― Maya Angelou When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear. When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken. Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold caves. And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.”
Still going through my hard drive from 2013 and continuing to find some cool stuff to process. This pano was taken at Patriarch Grove in the White Mountains (Eastern Sierras)
