There were so many exciting things that I noticed on this trip. Originally, I had planned to use a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera to learn how to use it. But we unfortunately forgot it at home. That was okay because I still needed to practice getting better at recording and taking pictures with my phone. All of my photos and videos were taken on my iPhone 17.
I still cannot believe I was able to capture this picture on my phone. It doesn't do justice to what I actually saw that night, but it's very close. Seeing the stars like this for the first time was so incredible, I think it was my favorite part. Even though my neck was hurting, I couldn't stop looking up. I am still mesmerized by nature. If nothing else convinced me, I would definitely go back camping just to see the stars like that again.
As my boyfriend and I had gotten into hiking recently, we expected there to be hiking trails, but that wasn't the case. Still, we got to work around the springs, and there were some dangerous and tricky steps to overcome. There were a lot of blocked-off areas— that's where I found these cacti. A lot of the areas that were blocked off were because they had cacti or very swampy areas, or because it was about to go into somebody else's land. I thought it was really cool that this was somebody's home; their actual house was on the property, and for them not to hide but to welcome the beautiful springs to people is heartwarming.