My Feet and the Fire Wave

This week's challenge at Inspiration Avenue, "Looking down at your feet", goes so well with some photos of the Valley of Fire that I wanted to show you. As you know, we went to the Valley of Fire in Nevada during Thanksgiving week. Before we went there, I had seen pictures of one part of this area that really fascinated me. I had no idea what it was called or where exactly it was located in the State Park. I couldn't find it on the map of the park. So we just tried to find it.

We were successful in the later afternoon, when the sun was already rather low in the sky. I found a sign for the "Fire Wave" and beneath it was an image of the place I was looking for. It involved a 20 - 30 minutes hike through rough terrain. No question that we made that hike - and we saw the Fire Wave in the slowly setting sun which brought out the colors of this rock formation even more.

This is where my feet come in - here you can see my hiking booted feet just above the Fire Wave:

Here is the photo of the Fire Wave without my feet - there are many pictures of it on the Internet with way more intense colors, but I wonder how much Photoshop and similar photo editing software contributed to those colors. This is what it looked like while we were there:

It's pretty incredible, right? The different colors of the layers are fascinating, and if I knew more about geology I could probably tell you here why this is so. However, I just enjoyed this sight.

This is the view to the other side (behind me) - not quite as spectacular, but still very beautiful.

The Traveling Phonebooth

When we went to the Valley of Fire during Thanksgiving week, Kaefer brought this little British phonebooth with her. It actually is a pencil sharpener - hidden behind the door - that we bought years ago in London Heathrow. She loves to photograph objects in the places we visit. In the summer when we went to BC she brought a toy car (a mini cooper) and took pictures of it everywhere. At that time she still used her compact camera, but this time she learned how to use a DSLR.

Wherever she saw a nice background, she put the phonebooth in place and then tried all kinds of pictures. It was fun to watch her, to see how much she was fascinated by using a big camera and play with it. Oh the possibilities!

Valley of Fire offered many good locations for the little red phonebooth.

Then we went to Death Valley where we stayed close to the Mesquite Dunes which we visited the next morning. Needless to say, the phonebooth was there as well. The funny thing was that other people started to take pictures of the phonebooth as well when they saw Kaefer doing it; one English gentleman suggested to her to ask for a dollar per shot. Brilliant idea!!

No location was too inconvenient or too cold or too hard. She has the right attitude.

And at Lake Tahoe the phonebooth even sat in the snow!

The White Tree of Minas Tirith

While we were in the Valley of Fire in Nevada a few days before Thanksgiving, we came across this tree along the Rainbow Vista trail. "Lord of the Rings" fans that we are, we immediately called it "the white tree of Minas Tirith", the capital of Gondor.

I chose it for this week's Texture Tuesday. I first did a brightness adjustment to get the tree even whiter than it actually was. I processed it with Kim's texture "kk_charmed" in Multiply at 100% and then brushed the texture away from the tree as much as possible - at least from the main branches.

You might think that the color is a bit too brilliant. Well, this is the same tree without any processing, straight out of the camera:

The tree was on the shady side of the trail, so I changed my white balance to "shade" which intensifies the colors. Before that I took a shot of the tree in automatic white balance. The image I got was completely off from what I saw with my eyes - look here:

The colors are somewhat dull and not quite as red as they really were. That is the beauty of Valley of Fire, the incredible colors. When I changed the setting to "shade" the camera almost saw what I saw and I was much more happy with the outcome.

Here are two more detail shots of the tree

I tried to find out what tree this is, but unfortunately I wasn't successful. If you know what it is I would be more than happy if you let me know in the comments. Thank you.

Almost Winter Camping

This year our school district had decided to close the schools for the entire week of Thanksgiving. Since we were at the point where we thought it would be nice to go away if even only for a few days we packed our tent and camping stuff and headed south east, to the desert.

Our destination was the Valley of Fire in Nevada, just 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas. You wouldn't really believe that so close to Sin City there would be so much natural beauty. But there is. However, that will be another post.

This was our campsite - snuggled between the incredible red rocks of the Valley of Fire. There were two campgrounds - one more suitable for RVs and trailers, with flush toilets and showers; and one more primitive one with private campsites and vent toilets. However, there was potable water available at each campsite, and that was a huge plus. The roof over the table is mainly for giving shade in the hotter months of the year. Valley of Fire gets incredibly hot in the summer, 100 F isn't rare at all, and temperatures often reach 120 F.

At this time of year, tent camping is not for sissies. It is quite comfortable during the day - we usually hit the lower 60s - but as soon as the sun had set it became pretty nippy and the nights were cold. Since it gets dark early at the end of November, the cold nights were also long nights. It was almost dark by 5:00 pm.

This was the other side of our campsite. We camped in the shade of Poodle Rock - which made for cold mornings as well since the sun wouldn't reach our site until the afternoon. The other side of this rock looks much nicer:

But - isn't this color phenomenal? All the campsites were snuggled among those rocks - take a look here, where you can see a bit of a small trailer standing in another campsite. It was really neat and I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

This was our way to the restroom (= vent toilet); such eye candy wherever you looked.

And this is right across from our campsite:

However, as I mentioned above, (almost) winter camping isn't for the faint of heart. A campfire in the evening and in the morning was a must. This wasn't our first attempt at winter camping. Years ago we had camped in Arches National Park on Christmas when night time temperatures dropped into the 20s. Compared to that, this was still very comfortable. But still...

Mornings were chilly and we wrapped our hands around mugs of hot chocolate and coffee while sitting next to the fire. As you can see, I even wore fingerless gloves and a hat.

The hat I even wore during the night - and quite some layers: a cami, long sleeve t-shirt, sweatshirt and a fleece; long pants, socks and fuzzy socks. I had layered two fleece blankets on top of each other beneath our sleeping bags and then each of us had another fleece blanket over the sleeping bag. This way we stayed cozy and warm. We actually slept pretty well.

However... did I mention that we really needed a campfire?

After a couple nights in the Valley of Fire we reluctantly left again - it is such a gorgeous place! We then made our way back into California and camped in Death Valley. It was slightly warmer, we camped just above sea level - but the next morning there was snow on the peaks of the mountains around us.

Would I do it again? Absolutely, in a heart beat.