Tuesday, January 27, 2015

December 3rd, Part One: Foiled Again

My plan to go to bed early and get lots of sleep didn't exactly go as planned...I wound up waking up a couple hours later, and when I finally fell asleep again after an hour or two of freaking out about how I was NOT sleeping, I kept waking up. That didn't keep me from getting up just after 4am to try to get some star pictures, though. I took a few pictures outside our hotel room, then Mark got up and we drove over to the Mesquite Sand Dunes. It was still pretty cloudy, but every once in a while the clouds would part and you could get a quick glimpse of all the stars overhead.

This was the best picture I got; you can see the stars in the lighter parts of the sky between the clouds. Someday, maybe I'll be able to catch a good night here to check out the sky!

The sky slowly got brighter as the sun started to come up. The low clouds didn't seem to be going anywhere.


We weren't the only ones out on the dunes; shortly after we arrived, a bunch of cars pulled up and a group of photographers piled out. They hiked further out onto the dunes with their gear.

Gee, such nice weather!

After a little while it was obvious that we weren't going to get a spectacular sunrise like we did last year. Rather than be grumpy about it, we decided to make the most of the time and started walking further out onto the dunes. One of the things I wished we had done last year was hike through the dunes, so I wasn't about to let this chance pass me by.



It was a bit disappointing to miss the chance to get some cool night sky pictures, but I have to admit...it was kind of neat to be in the desert with the fog rolling through the hills.

The photographers had all spread out and set up their gear along various dunes. It was so quiet that we could hear them talking to each other across the dunes.

We kept walking...

...and walking...

...and eventually made it to the tall dunes at the far end of the area. It was really cool to walk right on the narrow tops of the dunes with the sand sloping sharply away on either side. I, of course, had to get a jumping picture.   :)

You could see out into the valley from the tops of the taller dunes. We walked along the tops of all of the taller dunes before turning around and making our way back toward the car. By this point we were pretty hungry; we hadn't eaten breakfast yet. Honestly, I would have been happy to stay in the dunes all day.

Goodbye, dunes...I'll be back again someday!

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