New Life - Joshua Tree National Park

  This shot was from the first time I actually visited Joshua Tree National Park, and it may be the one that gets cemented in my brain even for years to come. The conditions lined up as it rained all day on the way up and the forecast had clouds through the night. But as we were sitting at our campsite at the White Tank campground we saw a potential patch of clear sky so we made the quick hike to Arch Rock to capture this without any other people there, just us the arch and the Milky Way. 

But all that gets overshadowed by the fact that our planned weekend trip got cut short to one night. After shooting the Milky Way and sunrise we were back resting at our campsite. I awoke to my friends and a park ranger looking at me babbling something that I couldn’t comprehend as I was still half asleep. Once I heard “you’re wife’s in labor” my brain flipped on and I was wide awake. My wife’s water had broken 6 weeks early and since we had no signal they couldn’t reach me overnight. She ended up calling the central dispatch office not knowing what campground we were at or my license plate, just the make, model and color of my car. Luckily we were at one of the main campgrounds and actually there at the time but it only took a few hours for them to send a ranger and for him to track me down and deliver the message. I drove out to get signal, confirm everything was ok, and we packed up and I headed straight to the hospital. The rest is history.

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