Earlier this week I posted Death Valley–Day 5: Joshua Trees. In it I stated that this week was a twofer. This is the second half of the Day 5 selects; they are from a trip out to the Racetrack Playa.

In the past I had seen pictures of the moving rocks of the Racetrack on several photography forums and have always been intrigued by them. So when I started doing research for this trip, going to the Racetrack Playa was given a high priority. The next to last day we made the long trip out to the playa. Did I say, “long trip?” That doesn’t begin to describe it. It’s 25 miles of washboard road. It took us over 2.5 hours, each way. I had heard about how bad the road was (many flat tires from the sharp rocks) but had no idea of how miserable of a trip it would be. We had planned the trip so we would be there for sunset so we would have some low light to accentuate the tracks. Because the trip took a lot longer than anticipated I’m very glad we started out early. The good news is we were blessed with some wonderful light while we were there.

In this image I was trying to capture the trail so that it made a S-curve up through the image. Read more »