We took much shorter trips in 2024, not getting away for much more than a long weekend. We stayed at the Joshua Tree KOA in Desert Hot Springs to visit family nearby. Staying at Joshua Tree KOA is much closer to them than La Quinta or Indio.
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) that was visiting our night skies in October. So a weekend visit to the Desert Hot Springs area was great for astrophotography, especially in Joshua Tree National Park. October is a great time to RV there since it has cooled down. When I arrived Friday Oct 18th, the wind was blowing up sand into the atmosphere so conditions were not ideal. But I pinpointed the Comet and took some preliminary photos until the hazy moonrise. It was my first time seeing & photographing the comet. Fortunately, Saturday & Sunday were less windy & clearer in Palm Springs.

Oct 19th: Because the UCSD Photography Group’s theme for the next meeting was “planes, trains, automobiles”. I stopped into the Palm Springs Aero Museum for the 1st time. It was perfect for “plane” photography so I had a bunch of photos for our next Zoom meeting. Conditions were pretty harsh with cloud-less skies but I enjoyed some wide angle photography at the museum.

Photographing Salton Sea is an ongoing passion project for me so after lunch with family in Palm Springs, I drove the hour there. Salton Sea had changed quite a bit since my last visit, the water had dropped significantly. The swingset which was 100ft from shore last visit, was now on shore with people swinging on it. I stayed till twilight and photographed Comet A3 over the lake/sea. The image is a composite of 50mm blue hour foreground photo and a 105mm f2.8 comet photo.

Sun Oct 20 afternoon and evening was spent at Hidden Valley dark skies area in Joshua Tree National Park. The main goal of this trip was to photograph Comet A3 before it was gone and this weekend was one of the last times to see it “close’. I arrived in late afternoon and scouted for a good Joshua Tree foreground. Since I had great late afternoon sunlight & shadows. I also tried out the Sigma 10-18mm aps-c lens on my Fujifilm X-Pro 2 camera. Later, photos of the comet were shot with the Nikon Z8 with 20mm & 50mm f1.8 Z lenses on a tripod. 50mm exposures were ~2secs and 20mm exposures were ~20secs. I tired to find an angle where I could get both the Milky Way & Comet A3 since they were in the same section of the sky.

When we travel, we rarely sit idle by the RV. So we usually fill our days, especially our last day on vacation. So after a few short hikes in the Alabama Hills in search of Nightmare Rock/Miss Alabama Rock and Shark Fin Rock.

We drove north to historic Mt Whitney Fish Hatchery.
“The Mt Whitney Fish Hatchery was once the largest and best equipped hatchery in California. In 2007, a large wildfire burned upstream of the hatchery. A year later, a heavy thunderstorm resulted in a massive mudslide that swept down Oak Creek wash, damaging ponds, water supplies, and employee homes. The main building escaped the flood and the facility is now an educational facility…” Info from bishopvisitor.com.
Unfortunately, they were closed but we were able to walk around the fish pond and feed the fish.

We usually bring our folding Zizzos bikes (pictured) or e-bikes on our trips and try to bike ride at least once, even if only around the campground.
There really isn’t a great area to bike around Lone Pine unless you mountain or e-bike Movie Road. Fortunately, just a mile up the road from Boulder Creek RV park is Diaz Lake. This Inyo County Campground has a road the circles the lake and was the only place to bike. The road was bumpy then gravel but beautiful in the evening. But be sure to wear mosquito repellent.
A nice way to finish our stay in Lone Pine.