This past weekend my wife and I went on our very first backpacking trip. We love the outdoors, hiking, camping, skiing/boarding, cycling, etc. But instead of "car camping", which is easy to do with a dog and everything; we decided to put forth a little more effort. It was awesome!
One of Andrea's patients told her about Music Pass which is southwest of Westcliffe. Neither one of us had explored that part of Colorado before. The sky felt bigger and the mountains more rugged. The closer we got to our destination the greater the wonder we felt.
There is something mystical about being in the wilderness. It has a way of quieting me internally, and making me feel that I need to simplify my day to day life. Being in the mountains refreshes me unlike anything else.
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread,
places to play in and pray in,
where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
- John Muir
I thought I had ruined this shot. Seeing as I do my star-trails in one take, vs. the stacked method, it is a guessing game. The end result, at 2am was a greatly overexposed image. Thanks to Light Room I was able to recover the details. 1 hour exposure, 24mm, f2.8, 1600ISO.
I'd never camped in Colorado in a place that wasn't impacted in some way by "light pollution". The timing of our trip was perfect too because it fell on a new moon. I was so stoked to have captured this photo of the Milky Way (another first for me). I tried to show it to Andrea at 2am. 35 second exposure, 24mm, f2.8, 3200ISO
