Wednesday, March 16, 2011

thevisualCollective Death Valley trip - Day 1

Since I'm not sure how content is going to go on the official visualCollective website, I figured I would share some of my early edits with my readers here. I shot a lot with my cell phone, and even more with my D300s. This post has a mix of images from both.

Day 1: We were up until about 3:30am packing cars and getting participants to the soundHouse from whence we departed at 5:45am. Very little sleep, but high energy levels as we set off.

Breakfast of muffins

Early morning phone calls

Breakfast - take 2

Stop for fuel


Around 11am we stopped in at the Willow Beach Marina and campground, where we had reserved two 16' boats for a 4 hour river trip to the bottom of the Hoover dam. Unfortunately, the day before we arrived, somebody destroyed one of the  boats we had reserved. Major bummer. The marina had forgotten that we needed two boats, so they comped us a big freakin' party boat.


 We didn't pay for the rental, just the fuel that we consumed on the river ($70 over the course of three hours). I was highly impressed with the service there, and I won't hesitate to recommend the Willow Beach river trips to anyone interested in having a good time.

The water was 54 degrees. Taylor loved it.

Ashley enjoying the sun

The scenery surrounding the river is gorgeous!


Ashley getting her sexy face on!



Taylor double-fisting Digital and Film

Andy trying to keep the boat from floating away


Kyra enjoying the ride

The original plan was for the trip to camp at the Willow Beach campground. It was closed for renovations or something, so we packed into the cars again and headed out to Lake Mead. We snagged a great spot at the Las Vegas Campground, about 7 miles NW of the lake. Andrew pulled out the guitar and we set about making camp and - most importantly - food.



the view - 10' from the tents

Genevieve enjoying the view

Sunset

Andrew served as the cookmeister for the trip. Our first group meal was a grand chocolate pepsi 3 bean chili. Nomnomnom. After dinner we looked over some of Andrew's footage from the day by lamplight.



Whew. Long post. Lots of content. I'll post images from Day 2 shortly!