I Ran to a local car meet the other day to talk to a friend and ended up shooting a Datsun. While we were chatting I started talking about Palomar and a guy mentions that he just heard about some dude…. 1304… 1804… or something, that goes up to Palomar. After telling him that’s me and giving him a card so he can remember the number, I snapped some shots of his car.
After having some plans fall through a buddy of mine and I decided to head out to Las Vegas to shoot a downhill longboarding outlaw race, The Vegas Chiller, held by Mike Snyder.
We kidnap another buddy of ours and leave Friday night at 10:30. Plans are to make our way out to the windmill farms just west of Joshua Tree National Park for some star trails. As we get closer to the junction of the 62 and 10, you can guess with our luck the sky is filled with clouds. When we finally get to the windmills, there is a small opening in the clouds and I jump on it.
After leaving the windmills we headed along the 62 to enter the north side of Joshua Tree. Our next stop was the White Tank Campground to shoot some Star Trails over the Arch Rock. Once in the campground, I was able to find the trail head. This is bad because I was told it was right off of campsites, “you can’t miss it.” I had plans to park in a nearby campsite and shoot the star trail if it was clear. Instead I park nearby and make the short hike to the rock. I almost gave up but I found a sign post that read “The Arch” so I assumed it was around here. I couldn’t see it, I had to walk around a few more rocks and finally found an arch. Since it was a full moon, I only used my flashlight to paint and brighten up some of the shadows. I let the camera run with 30 second exposures for around 10 minutes. I couldn’t take being bored and alone in the cold any longer.
Once you’re in Joshua Tree, you have to take some back roads that include a piece of old route 66 and Roy’s Motel and Cafe in Amboy, California. I have shot one of my planets here before so I was excited for the star trail
an old photo from a previous Las Vegas trip
Roy’s was the last stop on our drive out and we needed to get what little rest we could before shooting the race the next day.
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