I began my drive out of the Davis Mountains and my draw dropped as soon as I noticed the must stunning dawn moon rise I've ever seen. I stopped my car on the small highway (there definitely wasn't anyone else on the road at this time) and took a few pictures that came out amazing. You might hear a lot of photographers (or amateurs) say they're not doing any justice but I'd say these do a pretty damn nice job.
Right at the Interstate 10 intersection I saw an old gas station that was tagged with "NO NUCLEAR WASTE AQUI" and it reminded me very much of the book I had just begun at Balmorhea. Edward Abbey's the Monkey Wrench Gang.
I hopped back and forth between the ranger station and their campsite gathering details to obtain our back country permit while the other two finished packing their bags and closing camp. Eventually we got on the trail and on our way to the Pine Top camp area of the Bowl.
Our hike speed for the group was a pretty slow. Moving at that speed kept my fatigue to an absolute minimum. I would stop at the few shade trees to let everyone catch up. After one last particularly long break (30 minutes) I put the burners on. I blazed the rest of the climb and finally got a nice burn and workout. When Romey finally reached the end he made a comment about it being "amazing to watch me speed walk up that entire stretch." It was flattering of course. I hiked at my hyper speed for the rest of my vacation.
After dinner wrapped up we were all considerably worn out but Lee and I strapped our lights on and went to the nearby overlook to take some pictures and look at the stars. There was definitely more light pollution and air traffic here in the Guads versus the Davis Mountains the night before, but it was breathtaking nonetheless. For the portraits we did 25 seconds exposures with about a second of headlamp shined on us at the beginning. I was very pleased when Lee's shot of me came out even better than the one I took of him (he aimed the light better). I got to rehash everything I learned from the Star Party and saw some more Perseid meteors. It felt great to be up there. I also had a funny scare when I lost my balance posing in the dark on the edge of that overlook. I threw all of my weight immediately forward and down to the ground and just started laughing. It wasn't a sheer cliff hundreds of feet down, but it would have definitely been a bad time going over the edge.