Carol had no interest in getting up for sunrise (especially with our track record on this trip), so I drove up to the Alabama Hills on my own. I liked some of the compositions from yesterday, so I started with the same area from yesterday. It was obvious as soon as I arrived that there would be no sunrise today. I was hoping for at least a few minutes of golden light. I started shooting Mt. Whitney and Lone Pine Peak as soon as the sunlight hit the peaks, but any warmth in the light was gone in about 10 minutes.
I climbed up the ridge to shoot across the valley toward the peaks. It was a great place to shoot panoramas, and it has real promise for a day when there is actually good lighting here.
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| Lone Pine Peak | Lone Pine Peak and Mt. Whitney |
In the middle of the afternoon, a "funny" thing happened. While we're on this trip, we are making reservations for our Oregon trip in the fall. We are making reservations at 7:00 a.m. the first day they are available. Tomorrow, we have to make reservations for Nehalem State Beach near Cannon Beach. We've had spotty Internet coverage over the last couple of days in the campground, but this afternoon, we couldn't reach the site to make reservations. It's a good thing we tested it today. We didn't want to take any chances on not getting our reservations, so we decided to pack everything up as quickly as possible, get gas in Lone Pine, and drive home tonight. The people at the Boulder Creek RV Resort were very cool. When we told them we were leaving early, they volunteered to refund our night's stay since it was an issue with their Internet service.
It was a long drag home, but we were safely home at 11:00. The next morning, we got our first choice of campsite reservations for Nehalem State Beach in Oregon, so the quick trip home was worth it.
This was an unusual trip for us. Our photographs were disappointing because of the weather, but we had beautiful days to enjoy being outdoors and away from home. We had a chance to "practice camping" before our big trip in the fall. It's very unusual that the high point of a trip is a BBQ place, but Copper Top is that good. I had forgotten how much I love being in the Sierras. It's been a second home for me with backpacking trips, Outdoor Education trips, camping trips, and snow trips over the past 45+ years. I'm looking forward to returning to Yosemite in June to celebrate our anniversary.
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