Sunrise came early today, as expected. But the sun came up without me. My alarm clock didn't go off, and I slept blissfully through the early-morning hours. We got up about 9:00, ate breakfast, and drove up to Hurricane Ridge to shoot the wildflowers we had seen along the road on Sunday. The wildflower bloom at Hurricane Ridge was long gone, but there were some nice wildflower gardens along some seeps a couple of miles from the top.
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We took naps in the afternoon to prepare
for shooting the Milky Way from Hurricane Ridge. We drove up to Hurricane Ridge
shortly before sunset. Two does and three fawns
just below the parking lot provided the entertainment as we waited for sunset. The fawns were quite young and incredibly cute.
The doe with twins provided the early entertainment, but when the third fawn joined them, the fawns took it to another level.
They jumped and pranced, and then suddenly one of them would bound away. They would re-group and then go through the exercise
all over again. Our only regret was that the sun had already set and the lighting was flat. As they were leaving the area,
the doe and twins walked within a few feet of us. We had to back up to give them room to get by us.
Shortly after sunset,
we noticed the crescent moon setting over a ridge near the Visitor Center. It was only a couple days after the new moon, so the sliver
of moon was very small. Then, we spent the next couple hours in the Explorer listening to our book on CD and waiting for the Milky Way
to appear. Finally, at 11:00, we were ready to start shooting. At first, the Milky Way was a subtle haze that crossed the sky directly
overhead. But as the night progressed, it became brighter and more clearly-defined. The biggest challenge was trying to block the light
from car headlights. There was a volunteer astronomy program that started at 10:30, and it drew a steady flow of visitors.
We finally finished shooting about 1:00 a.m. and got back to camp a little after 2:00. We quickly set our computers to download the new images and went to bed.
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