Happy New Year everyone! After having been bit by the night photography bug, I decided to head back to my favorite desert playground in the Mojave: Red Rock State Park.

I always map out a track I want to do on Google Earth and then download the waypoints and trail to my GPS. I usually works out really well, except that the height information on Google earth is somewhat sketchy. This particular track was pretty good in the beginning but then ended up on a hillside at 40º on soft dirt. All I can say is “Hail to the Jeep”. After some good adrenaline intake we made it to the peak with a phenomenal view of Mojave. The rest of the trail was reasonably easy and we made it back to the camp without any further nail biting.

The other reason I went back to Red Rock so soon is that the morning of 1/3/14 was the best time to see the Quadrantid meteor shower. So I started the night out with some photos of the milky way to warm up. This is warming up the camera mind you. I didn’t get anywhere near warm at 30ºF. Then at 5 am the alarm got me out of my comfy sleeping bag again. The reward was a great show of about 50 meteors per hour until the sun came up.