i was invited by good friend chip morton (check out his photography!) to join him and his daughter on a camping trip up into the eastern sierra. scouted out the alabama hills area, and it was overcrowded with people, campers, rvs and atvs...no thank you, no serenity there much anymore. because of instagram, it has become a destination for many people to go to see sights of the many pictures they have seen on social media, and the camping is free which has created an unorganized zoo of way too many people. it is a shame, as a once unknown, unspoiled, and beautiful place is now becoming overrun, over-exploited, and ruined by hoardes of uncaring self-centered people...
we decided on going to the eureka sand dunes instead, as chip had never visited there and was happy to have me lead the way and show him how to get there...and once we got there, we arrived to discover that it was also crowded with more people than i have ever seen there before too (i know it was the t-giving holiday weekend, but really? wtf??)...
we arrived kinda late in the evening (well, it gets dark at 4:30pm in the area), so were unable to go into the dunes and do any really good scouting with it being dark out. plus, my doggie and i were both feeling some bad effects of something we both ate, as we both had nasty bloating with diarrhea frequently flowing out of us both (yuck), so a long hike into the dunes was not really a good idea at that time...
the temperatures that night dropped down into the teens and was well beyond cold. and to make matters worse, besos was having to go to the bathroom every couple hours because of having the runs (and i joined him a couple times with me having them too)...i'm all bundled up in a sleeping bag, and have to get out, put on shoes, go out into the dark cold, wait for besos to do his business, then clean off his long fur on his backside (yuck again), then climb back into sleeping bag and try to fall asleep as a frozen popsicle again...then repeat it all again in a couple hours...
and of course, as things often happen for me to make matters even worse, all of the sanitary wipes that i was using to clean off besos' rear had become frozen solid, and the poop left in his fur was also frozen in place (triple yuck!)..fml at this point of the cold freezing night! and of course, when things warmed up later in the morning, well, you get the picture...really needed to do a true deep cleaning of all blankets, towels, and the entire interior of my jeep grand cherokee upon arriving back at home later in the weekend...literally a shitty ordeal...
anyway...in the morning we did some recon and hiked without our camera gear a few miles out into the sand dunes away from everybody...seems all the others were clearly focused only on dunes closest to their campsites, go figure, eh?
we found some really cool dunes with some great edge lines and sand ripples...and then aligned it all up with smartphone apps to know where the moon was rising later...both me and chip had different visions of what we wanted to capture, so we each chose different scenes a few hundred meters apart...we returned back to camp, had lunch, and then tracked back out with all our camera gear on our backs...
i set up for this image based on my mobile data of where the moon would rise over the top of the dunes at about 5:15pm...i seldom release any shots of the moon, or even of sand dunes, but i knew this image was special as i was capturing it and taking in the whole scene with the moon rise and the glow of the dunes all around me...totally breathtaking...this impression is the result, hope that it gives you the same feelings it did for me as i took this image...
it was so beautiful out under the full moon on the dunes. after taking our separate pictures, we all joined back up again and just stood there marveling about nature's beauty as the moon danced just above the tops of the towering sand dunes. we decided to climb up a bit higher on one of the dune ridges, but we soon stopped. as even under the moonlight, and even when using headlamps, the steep drop-off on both sides was quite daunting in the darkness...falling off either side would create a nasty tumble-down the sand slope to its base, and an even more difficult climb back up and out would then need to ensue...
we decided to walk back to camp, it was already getting very cold as the temperature noticeably dropped quite rapidly once the radiance of the sun left us...on the walk back, none of us used our headlamps and let the moon glow light our way, so cool, so beautiful, so magical...
and i would be totally remiss if i did not have the oldest, and one of the most famous musical pieces of all time about moonlight in my blog today: "moonlight sonata" by beethoven ...(just click on any of the words in the blue links to listen to the musical selection)...
"see me as your moonlight
and you're the sky, i'm the satellite
dancing through your night" ― bodhinku, satellite
"she has such a pull over me, holding me in her force, just as the earth holds the moon" ― bodhinku, her pull
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