Racetrack Playa Photos

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:59:59 -800

Jason and I headed to Las Vegas to make a second attempt at travelling to
Racetrack Playa since we'd been turned back last year. Luckily the roads from
Vegas are much better than the ones from California, so we made it there with
only a single flat tire. The playa is indeed a big dried up lake bed with
rocks that blow around when there's enough rain to turn the lake bed into mud.
For the rest of the year the lake bed is a cracked mess like what you see in
the "California's running out of water!" scare ads. I really like visiting the
desert--seeing all the weird prickly trees, drinking in the dryness of the
land, and generally getting away from the endless Western Oregon green. Also
made some good to mediocre nighttime shots of the desert. Gallery. I'm hoping to get out to
the Oregon desert a bit more this year for some practice; to enable that, I
bought a tripod last week after I came back. We also got stuck in an elevator
for half an hour after eating dinner in the Wynn buffet.