Last year my friend, Laura (LT for short), and I travelled to Jasper, Alberta for the Dark sky festival. I thought it would be cool to play around and try to get some sky shots that weekend and spend some time with my LT. LT is just the type of girl, who is down for any kind of adventure. I was in Calgary at the time, and she lives in Edmonton. So I met up with her in Edmonton, and off we went.
I had all my camera gear with me. I wasn’t really sure what to expect because I haven’t worked in a lot of low light conditions, so I made sure to be gear prepared. There were all kinds of events going on that weekend for the festival, but we wanted to do the most cost-effective ones. Being that, at the time I didn’t have a job as I was newly moved to Calgary. So we did a little town exploring, and of course, the first thing on the list was food. Then we thought we would hit up a hike for some free fun. We choose to do the Valley of the 5 lakes hike. It was supposed to be a 3 hour hike, and easy. Well, let me tell you… it was not 3 hours, and at first, we didn’t think it was so easy either. Although, we weren’t intimated, even after a woman going the opposite direction stopped us and asked if the end was near. That should have been our first clue. We got a little off the trail (I think that lady who stopped us did too), stopped for photos, and the sun was going down and less and fewer people were on the trail. To calm our nerves, when we thought the end was near… time after time after time, we started singing. We sung everything from, ‘Ain’t no Mountain High Enough’ to, my personal favorite, ‘This Little Light of Mine’. We sung so loud a young man from Singapore came walking the opposite direction and heard us… we were clearly embarrassed because we thought we were all alone. He was just about to start the hike. He thought the hike was only an hour. We told him we’ve been on the trail for over 3 hours. So he turned back with us, and said he could hear us singing for a while… as if we weren’t embaressed enough, he just confirmed it what we were afraid of. We chatted the rest of the way with him, and went back to the parking lot with him and went our separate directions.
Laura and I then went to the hotel to get the rest of my gear and head out to get some star photos. We drove out to this little vacant spot we read about at. Even though that’s what we went there for, and I was hoping to get photos of the stars, I think my best shot was from our very eventful hike.
So as my good friend Johnny would say, stay on the trail kids.
PS. You should probably check out the Dark Sky Festival, read about it here.
Kat
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