Venus on Mars Travelogue: Day 1-2 (Patreon)

This is going to be an on/off story from shooting my latest book Venus On Mars. There will be other posts in between but you will be able to find the others once published using the post tags.

Enjoy!

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I was hanging out in Las Vegas doing nothing much except wait for Roarie Yum. She was driving in from Joshua Tree which is a 5-6h journey. 

The day before, I had finished most of the essential shopping: Tent, sleeping bags, snacks, primus, camping plates, cutlery, pots and pans, and a kettle, and some (low sodium) freeze-dried food. And some camping chairs, towels, bug spray, vitamins, and 15gallons of water.
Oh and some rope, and a shovel.

Sounds sinister, but in the wild, if you need to deposit the leftovers of yesterday's dinner, you bury it. I very much believe in the saying "Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but Photographs" when hiking.

As for the rope I knew we potentially needed it both to be able to help get the car out of being stuck in deep sand, and aid in light climbing.

So I was waiting for Roarie in the desert heat in an almost meditative state in an empty parking lot outside a greasy spoon diner near the airport.

When I touched down in Vegas 2 days before, I had learned that the second model I had scheduled could not come anyway. It was a ten-day trip, and I had no way of finding an alternative model with such short notice. 

The worst of nightmares as it completely defied my purpose of the trip.

Roarie approached Vegas, and we arranged to meet at a long term parking spot, ditch her car, and continue in my rental.

We headed north and made a stop at Wholefoods and got some more supplies and set off towards Little Finland. From Vegas, when you leave the main road crossing the Virgin River east of Lake Mead, the going gets a bit rough.

We had 1.5h on a dirt washboard road passing Whitney pocket then another 30-40 min driving in a sandy river bed and over some rocks before getting there. Several times I blessed the foresight to getting an AWD car.

Little Finland (aptly named after all the fins) is in the wild. No signs no plaque no nothing except sand and rocks.

Nobody else was there, and we had free picking on where to camp, so we picked the south end as this is sheltered from the wind.

We set up the tent, sleeping bags, and walked upon the location, with probably 45min of daylight left.

Little Finland is an almost alien place. 

There are so many structures, but since everything is the same color finding a previous spotted place without a handheld GPS is almost impossible. If you walk on the other side of a particular structure, chances are you will miss it as you don't recognize it. I learned this the hard way when trying to refine spots I had seen 3-5 minutes before.

We shot 3-4 different sets, including one after sunset and then pulled out the flashlights, hiked back to the tent, and started preparing dinner.

The weather was pleasant and hot, and we had time to sit down and plan the next day's adventures. We talked through both the route I expected to take, what my plans were. 

And I was thrilled to be able to listen to a lot of Roarie's experiences with desert environments.  She had been to a couple of the locations we planned to visit on earlier occasions, and such experiences can prove invaluable.

The next morning we were up pre-dawn and shot for about 2-3 hours, hiked back to the car when the sun was too high in the sky for good lighting, and started packing up. 

We again had about 2.5h driving on shitty roads before hitting the main road and going towards Zion. 

And in Zion on the first hike we took, we did we managed to shoot two of the most iconic images from that entire trip.

But that is another story for another day. 

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If you don't have the Venus On Mars book let me just mention that it's on sale for the next two weeks. If nothing else just read the reviews on the link above.