Flying by the Seat of Our Plans

After dinner, we grabbed the gear and headed down to the creek.   The Milky Way wasn't quite yet over the creek and the lodge patios were lit, so we tried to incorporate the lodge itself.  This picture took a lot of time to edit.  It is a composite of two photos: one about 20 seconds long to capture the Milky Way and one about 4 seconds long (and at lowest sensitivity) to capture the lodge without it just appearing like a supernova.  Then I essentially painted the two pictures together in photoshop.   By the time we sorted the lodge shot out, the Milky Way had risen over the creek.  There are several wing-dams in the creek that channelize the river, creating some nice ripples. We had thought we'd have to wait for the moon to light the rocks and trees, but the lodge did a nice job of casting soft light on the scene.  This photo is actually a stack of several (5-10) photographs, each 20 seconds long.  Stacking allows the computer to differentiate the real stars from ca

Laura is sweet and came up with another idea for an overnight getaway.  The focus was to go see Johnson Shut-ins in the Missouri Ozarks.  When we were trying to find a place to stay, I opened the Dark Sky Map and saw that there's a large area west of there.  Laura quickly found that Echo Bluffs State Park, only two-years old, has a nice lodge overlooking a creek, and she booked it.  I picked out a few stops on the way there and our trip was already overbooked.  We stopped where we could along the way and just enjoyed the ride. First, we stopped and took a short hike to Blue Spring.  To put the name in perspective, I did not edit this picture at all.  The color you see is what we saw in person! A few more pictures from Blue Spring: The huge volume of water coming out of the spring flows over rocks and aquatic plants, setting up some other nice photos. Next, we headed to Round Spring on the way to Echo Bluffs.  We walked around wh