Just a Story...

Coming back to civilization may not always be a good thing.  Driving out of Death Valley, the first email my lovely little iPhone got was from United telling me that my flight has been delayed for 4 hours, so I won't get back to Chicago until well after 10 PM tonight...

Let me tell you my weekend drama at Death Valley.

As promised, I got up at 2:37 AM Saturday morning, managed to leave the hotel at 2:55 AM and headed out to Death Valley.  About 10 miles out of Las Vegas, I immediately drove into heavy rain and then it turned into a real winter snowstorm.  It was pretty unbelievable -- the snowflakes were like thousands of silver bullets coming at my car, and I could barely see anything -- there was ONLY the darkness, the silver bullets and my headlights....  After about 20 miles, I seriously thought I should just forget about Death Valley and head back to Vegas...  but I didn't, as my mind was controlled by overwhelming stupidity at that point!!  Through millions of "silver bullets", I drove about 80+ miles, and finally, out of the storm area...  Honestly, something is very wrong with the current weather pattern where Chicago has been about 50F for the week, and Vegas is experiencing some really tough shxx so far this winter.

The bottom line is:  I made it to Death Valley in 1 piece by 7 AM -- safe and sound, but a bit freaked out...

The rest of the day was as usual -- wondering off in the wilderness and totally stressed out about where and how to take my pictures...  By the time I got back to the hotel, it was about 4:27 PM, yeah, believe me, there was NOTHING to photograph at that point!!  I stayed at the same hotel back in February, but could not remember that there was NO TV in the room.  NO telephone either... by then, my iPhone has been in "No Service" for about 10+ hours -- how wonderful!!!  I felt lost for a minute, but immediately realized that this would be a great opportunity for me to fast and meditate!!  Haha, just imagine how that story ended :-)

I went to bed at 5:30 PM, literally, and that ended my night!

My alarm started singing at 3:30 AM this morning so I could go back to the sand dunes to photograph the milky-way (because it was a moonless night).  Either God hated me or I was too stupid, I did not find the milky-way.  My friend once told me that if I look up to the sky, I wouldn't miss it.  Guess what, I did look up and I missed it...  So, once again, no milky-way shots.

It's pretty unthinkable that I have to WORK tomorrow -- coming back to civilization is definitely NOT a good thing!


12-22-12

By the way, the bottom photo was put on Michelle's Facebook home page today with the following note:

Courtesy of my mother who spends all of her free time traveling to beautiful places and taking amazing photos at strange hours...