So, last but not least, we went to the beach and hung out in the warm sun with some cheese and crackers and beverages. There, I hiked about 20 minutes to get to the last of the tufa pictures. I know, I should have waited 6 hours, gotten them in golden hour light, but who has time for that?
At that point, I was pretty tired, so we went back to the hotel room for a nap. We may or may not have gotten stuck watching reality TV shows instead of resting. Then, we drove to some hot springs, and I ran around like an idiot getting all the photos with the nice golden light. Neither one of us had remembered to pack a swimsuit, so we were just looking. It looked pretty nice.
We were sort of shuttling back and forth on the same 20 miles of 385 the whole trip. On our way to dinner, I saw the moon over the silhouetted mountains, and got a couple frames off before the scene changed completely. Looking closely at the full-res file, I can tell that I focused on the edge of the hills and not on the moon, but I think it works anyway.
That night, we had one of the weirder dinner experiences of our lives. We went to a restaurant that came recommended, and seemed pretty nice from their menu online. We got there, got seated, and just after our drinks came out, the head (and only) chef quit, and walked out. It took the rest of the staff about half an hour to convince him to come back and finish service for the people that were already seated. The food was actually still pretty good, if memory serves.
The last picture is a ringer; I took it in Yosemite, on the way back. We were going to stop for gummy bears, as the best ones in the world are in Yosemite, but we missed the turn. We did get a nice photo op, though.
