Son and I just returned from what’s become our annual Father’s day sojourn, boondock camping near Tarryall Creek. Been there done that photographically, I was thinking, posted such here on multiple occasions (anyone remember @chroma_ghost’s fatuation with the cows? ), but I still managed to find a few new images. It rained intermittently, along with the requisite clouds:
That’s the best kind. I always go for the brown rice that has to be scraped off the pan.
My wife and I started our 34th anniversary yesterday with shrimp and grits for breakfast (along with our 25 year old daughter who lives next door, conveniently enough) then wrapped up last night with dinner at the Steamboat Warehouse in Washington (Louisiana). So did about 4,000 other people from what I could see… We started with their grilled crab and crawfish cakes then I had the Steamboat seafood platter (with a cup of gumbo) and she had the catfish and shrimp. Mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm!
But I bet in the Colorado backcountry, your dinner was just about as good. Probably a lot cooler outside, too (it hit 98F yesterday).
Oh, I scorched the rice good. Halfway through the steam, I noticed the flame had gone out, so I re-ignited it and turned it up a bit to catch up, bad move…
Washington, LA… camped there one weekend in the early '70s with my family, memorable for a rapid exit of the nearby railroad trestle when we heard a train whistle. We also explored the old railroad station, I remember a neat wooden structure in serious disrepair. I’d love to find a photograph or two of it to build a model.
Yes, with the rain came cooler temperatures, highs in the upper 50s to lower 60s F. Having made the mistake of bringing the summer sleeping bag to Antonito last month, I dug out the -20F double bag and slept like a log.
Also a mistake at Antonito was trying Tony’s salt-free seasoning in the etouffee, bad news. The shaker you see here is the regular stuff, a much better outcome. My dad regaled a story of entertaining Tony Chachere at the house, a friend-of-a-friend. The fellow was an apothecarist, mixer of all sorts of seasonings and such. He gave my dad a recipe for an athlete’s foot cure, mostly dilute sulfuric acid…
Yep. We tried that once. Tasted so-so OK but was “fill your sinuses” thin, powdery and airborne. It was like mixing sneeze powder, flour and nitric acid when inhaled. Every time we used it, it hung in the air and we sneezed for half an hour.
Lately we’ve been using Slap Ya Mama (made in Ville Platte) instead.
Unfortunately, I must use the salt-free version. I lost a kidney last year due to cancer, and the main thing my nephrologist harps on is LOW SODIUM. Well, that and drinking a lot of water.
We had been loyal users of regular Tony Chachere’s for at least 30 years. Great stuff!
The area looks significantly different then when I was up the road at Tarryall Reservoir to capture the Milky Way with some friends back in February! It was single digits when the weather predicated about 15 degrees (F) warmer. It was a rough 2 hours out there between 3-5 am.
It looks like a fun relaxing trip. I haven’t had a chance to camp this year, but there’s still time.
Thanks! Yes, I used two different tracked and stacked captures for the sky. One was unfiltered and the other with a deep red filter, often used for B&W, for hydrogen-alpha. I extracted the hyrdogen-alpha data in Siril and blended it with the red channel in GIMP. I probably overdid the effect, but it was my first time trying the technique. The moon was hard to deal with in that shot too.
Nice! Looks like from other side of the lake relative to the road… ??
We went out Sunday early morning to gaze at the sky, clear after all that rain. Best Northern Hemisphere sky I’ve seen yet, 'cept for north of Chama NM one cold night from the open gondola of the dinner train - Milky Way there was in plain view.
We camp in the dispersed area about 4 miles west of the lake, north of the store/bar, Rock Creek runs through it. On the earlier parts of the road, there are some sites facing west with a great view of the Mosquito Range.
Both shots I believe are from the northern most pull off along the Tarryall Rd.
I think the darkest area in Colorado I’ve been has to Sweetwater Lake. I took some pictures of the area for the DarkSky Colorado since they’re trying to certify the area once/if it officially becomes a state park.
I got back a couple weeks ago from visiting Utah for the NightScaper Conference. Zion was also exceptionally dark. So many dark spots in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
Thanks for tips. I’ll have to look into the area more. I’ve camped at Eleven Mile Canyon nearby.
Colorado Springs Astronomical Society has a dark site near Gardener, CO, in the valley between the Sangre de Christo and Wet Mountains. They have a gathering coming up:
I bought a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i ProPak about two years ago (three?). I have yet to use it in the field. I took one very rough test exposure of the M31 area at ~17mm from my light-polluted backyard – Just to confirm it more or less tracks. That’s it so far.
When I ordered it, I was getting interested in wide field tracked astrophotography and I read / watched everything I could find. By the time it finally arrived months later (COVID) it was heading into winter and got rainy / cloudy for months (literally). Then it went straight into hazy summertime with mosquitoes (Louisiana). By that time I had forgotten most of what I had learned (for some value of “learned”): flat frames, bias frames, dark frames, flat dark frames, dithering, stretching, yada yada yada yada…
I wish I could get even semi-reasonable results from my backyard, since the setup-shoot-stack-diagnose-repeat100x cycle gets really cumbersome when book-ended by drive-setup-wait and takedown-drive-stow for every cycle. At least I could wait inside the house while taking n subs instead of fighting mosquitoes the whole time.
I also bought a 2i a little while ago and haven’t yet used it. We don’t have many mosquitos in Colorado, but it’s doggone cold in the mountains on clear nights. Need to find a setup I can control from the inner reaches of my sleeping bag…
), but I still managed to find a few new images. It rained intermittently, along with the requisite clouds:
