49/365 Badwater

Okay so my journey to Death Valley is complete. I am finally sat in my hotel room blipping this.

This is Badwater Basin, the lowest place in the United States, it is something like 270 feet below sea level, they have put a big "Sea level" mark on the hill behind where I took this shot. Kind of weird to think that sea level is that high above you!

So how was the trip to get here? So last night I ended up staying at a hotel near Newark Airport because of the overnight snow that would make travelling to the airport in the morning more awkward. I hardly slept then went over to the airport on the 4am shuttle. The plane took off an hour late due to them having to deice the plane while we were on the runway. I am very glad we managed to take off at all.

Then followed at 120 mile drive from Vegas to Death Valley. Hotel room wasn't ready so I drove the 20 or so miles down to the Badwater Salt Flats to scope them out for later in the week. I ended wandering way out into the flats to get away from all the other people so I could get a clean shot. It was about 80f I think and the sun was rather strong too. I ended up staying until after sunset. There was a line at check in when I got back too...

So all in all a rather tiring day. I am now rather exhausted, but finally in my hotel room. I haven't had time to sort through many of the images I got at the flats so I thought I'd share this one of the sunset over the salt flats.

Hope it has come out ok, my new laptop doesn't have the greatest of screens for photo editing the brightness varies a lot with the slightest tilt of your head, so I used the histogram in Lightroom to adjust the brightness etc to levels that I thought would be right.