Framedlight

The Badwater Road is full of wonders. Coming back up north from the basin you come to a track leading to Natural Bridge, an arched structure over yet another small canyon. I was lucky that a girl in a black floaty dress decided to walk under the arch as I was photographing it. Neither of us would have qualified for a glamour shot at the time. Beautiful as Mairi is, shorts and a tee shirt does not qualify.  From here we moved back to Artists Palette again. We had a late lunch at the parking area (lunch was always late) and then took the track that leads through the coloured rocks. I used the polaroid filter on the camera to darken the skies and try to bring out the colours more.  Mairi did pose for me from the top of a rock.  We were amused when leaving on the unmetalled road that a large camper van was endeavouring to manoeuvre up it. Eventually, with about a 20 point turn it gave up. We felt vindicated in our choice of accommodation! ...

Furnace Creek is really well situated for some of the major attractions of Death Valley. It is just off the road leading down to Badwater, the lowest part of the valley. So we decided to drive to Artist's Palette, an area of coloured rock lying to the west of the Badwater road. We stopped by the side of the main road to take pictures of the coloured hills in the warm late afternoon sunshine. The colour is caused by oxidisation of different metals, iron, mica and manganese, in the rocks. Then we drove into Artist's Drive, a rough one way road leading into the area of coloured stone. There is a car park looking over the main area of interest. When we got there it was quite crowded and people were walking around the tracks leading through the rocks. We hung on and the sun started to go down. Not a dramatic sunset, there was very little colour in the sky, but the hues in the rocks started to come out nicely. As it got dark the car park emptied completely an...