What Happened to April?

April? It was just here a minute ago. Now it's passed without a post. Huh...it was such a good month, too. Crazy good...I miss it already.

What happened in April was a trip to Toroweap Overlook on the (remote) north rim of the Grand Canyon, a photo outing to Trona Pinnacles and my Mom's 88th Birthday.  It was a busy month because there was also a celebration of photographer Ray McSavaney at the Camera Committee, the Otis College Kite Festival with my mom and sister, the LA Regional Foodbank's 2015 Food From the Bar campaign kickoffs, theater and movies with friends and some good visiting.

This Trona Pinnacles post is a small remedy and I'll try to post about Toroweap soon.

The weather was severely windy until late on Saturday. The early arrivals on Friday all put up and took down tents (or collected blown heaps of tent material). As you might guess from looking at the shot to the right, my tent poles are now tent pretzels. Doesn't that tent looks like it's trying to escape the frame? I packed it up and slept in the back of my Forester.

Conditions improved so that by 9:00pm Saturday, campers were able to pitch a tent that stayed in place.

At the top of this post, you see a sort of panoramic triptych looking northeast to clouds gathering over the "other range of pinnacles". We camped in a protected bowl among the pinnacles of the "front range", but still a long walk to the lone toilet (see below) and the interpretive materials.

Our days were largely overcast and cool but the night sky cleared enough to give us stars and cloudy texture. It was great for those composing starscapes and spinning star trails. We had plenty of moonlight to illuminate the pinnacles.

There was a nice bonus just before sunset on Saturday. The folks who were prepared to shoot captured a lovely rainbow. This MeetUp photo album has rainbows posted by Peter and Jeff.