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.
No one really knows how these stones move and leave these interesting trails behind them in this dry and arid but beautiful landscape of Death Valley. It was amazing to have this vast expanse to ourselves as we marveled the beauty of the space in front of us.
After several false attempts I finally ended up at Schulman Grove as the Milky Way season was drawing to a close. This ancient bristlecone pine is obviously very popular as several like minded photographers showed up as the evening progressed. Amazingly, everyone worked together to light up the tree with two low level lights. Taken with a Nikon D850/ 14-24mm, f2.8 lens Settings for MW was 14mm, f2.8, 13sec at ISO 6400, 10 exposures were blended in Starry Landscape Stacker to reduce noise.
