Vegas and daytrips
· Friday January 16, 2009
On the first of 2009, my mom and I flew south to Las Vegas. Why Vegas? Well, it’s fairly cheap to get there (due to the subsidies provided by the casinos), there are plenty of things to do in the area, and it was a nice way to escape the chill of Winter in the Northwest.
When my mom first suggested the idea in December, I have to admit I was a bit skeptical. We had first visited when I was about 12 (with many extended family members in tow). Even then it had just all seemed a bit… excessive. An extravagant city in the desert may have been a testament to modern development and America’s technical prowess (i.e. the Hoover Dam) when it was first built in the ’30s, but nowadays it just seems so wasteful. Indeed, there are (and have been for some time) mounting concerns regarding the sustainability of water supplies to cities in much of the Southwest.
However, I also knew that as time goes on, there will be fewer opportunities to travel with my mom and take ‘family vacations’. So I put aside my ethical and environmental doubts and began to look into possible activities in the area. It turns out there are astoundingly beautiful parks that one can visit as a day-trip from Las Vegas. Here’s how we spent our time:
Day 1— Wander the strip
Day 2— Death Valley National Park
Day 3— outlet mall, Red Rock Canyon State Park and food shopping
Day 4— Zion National Park
Day 5— Red Rock Canyon State Park
One of the most beautiful sights of the trip, however, was the stunning sunset that we saw from the plane during the flight south and its associated afterglow.
Afterglow
I’ve been on a fair few flights, but I don’t think I’ve seen any sunsets like this one. My friend Suyeon who also flies often says they’re very common, though I remain dubious (or perhaps I’m always asleep, haha).
Day 1
The Las Vegas strip is what it is— so over the top you can’t help but cringe, smile and shake your head! I took some snaps with my K20D, but wasn’t terribly satisfied with any of the shots I got. I didn’t feel too out-of-place with my dSLR, though— this was tourist central. One place that my mom and I enjoyed wandering through was M&M’s World. There were at least 5 levels full of M&Ms-related merchandise (again, excessive). The best bit, though, was you could fill a bag with your own selection of ANY combination of M&Ms-colours under the desert sun!
M&Mom
Day 2
The next day, we piled into our Red Chevy Cobalt (it rather bothered me that a car named after a blue compound was *red*) and drove the 120 miles to Death Valley National Park (via a town called Pahrump! We drove through again in the evening and dined at a delicious restaurant called the Red Sky which was situated on EMERY STREET :-D).
The drive took about two hours, plus half an hour’s faff at a Smith’s grocery store for lunch and a super-Wal*Mart for a tripod.
tripod-related mini-rant
I fully admit I have nobody to blame but myself on this one, but I’ve bought yet another cheap tripod. This makes four that I’ve picked up over the years. I can never seem to justify spending $100+ on a nice Manfrotto with a great ball-head given that I know I only use it several times a year. This leaves me with crappy tripods whose performance I’m never satisfied with and don’t always schlep along with me on vacation. This vicious cycle really must end…
(end rant)
I knew even before we arrived at Death Valley National Park that a single day would only begin to scratch the surface of its beautiful scenery. The first site we visited was Badwater, the lowest region of the park— and indeed, all of North America.
Badwater
Badwater is a location that is bursting with character, and it’s no wonder that photographers journey here to capture its singular beauty. It was quite pleasant in the winter (if a bit dry, haha), but one could easily imagine the deathtrap it would become in the summer.
One of my greatest photographic concerns before departing on the trip was that I wouldn’t have a wide-enough lens to capture the scenery. The widest lens that I did have was the Canon 18-55mm IS kit lens, which is what I used to take the above picture. I remain rather unsatisfied with its wide-angle performance (sharpness, distortion); this is probably just because I’m fussy and have become accustomed to the standards of prime lenses. While I would’ve liked a lens wider than 18mm to get down closer the ground to bring out more of its details, the image turned out more or less as I’d envisioned.
What was surprising to me was that I really didn’t miss not having an ultra-wide angle lens. There were maybe two or three instances where I thought the scenery really called for such a focal-length, but otherwise I was quite happy shooting mostly with my 35mm Pentax macro lens!
In the next post, I’ll finish narrating the rest of the trip and talk about some of the other stunning sights I saw. As my friend Elizabeth will tell you, I’m terrible about finishing my blog posts about trips. But I promise I will do my best :-)
— Emery Ku
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