Leon Turnbull Photography

We had a spectacular sunset here Friday night. Can you tell from my photo? Yeah, right. It would’ve been a bit better if I had been in the right spot to photograph it! But no, Leon messed up and went to the wrong spot. Oh well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles, I guess.

So on Thursday night, we also had an amazing sunset in the Sacramento area. I saw the beautiful clouds and colors forming, but I was not able to get out to photograph it that night. I was hoping for a repeat on Friday night.

And after work on Friday, it did again look like there might be a nice sunset forming. I decided to go up to Auburn to the Lake Clementine area. There was one particular spot I wanted to try to go to, but I wasn’t exactly sure where it was. Well, I thought I knew precisely where it was. I’m such a smart guy. But for once, I was wrong. Shocker. The spot where we ended up, where I thought I wanted to be, was not indeed the spot that I wanted to photograph. Make sense? I was not lost, I just went to a different place than I wanted. And although the sunset that night was spectacular, where we were, it was not even close.

I took my son Jadon along with me, and the dog, Kaya. I was surprised Jadon wanted to come. He’s not usually a big hiker, and this was not really going to be a very interesting hiking destination. We were just hiking down to an overlook of the lake, then just wait around there until the sun sets. Not exactly exciting. But he wanted to come with me. So that is cool. And he said afterwards that he actually had a fun time. Very cool. I had no trouble convincing the dog to come along.

The trail leading down to the overlook was very dusty and swarming with gnats. It was about 90 degrees when we started the hike at around 6pm. The gnats were a bit bothersome. Unfortunately for Jadon, he got quite a few bites on his legs. He is worse than his old man in that regard, anything and everything will bite him if given half a chance.

It took about 30 minutes to hike the 1.5 miles down to the overlook. It was not until we got there that I realized it was the wrong spot. Afterwards, I think I now realize my mistake and where I did want to be instead (and if we had gone to the other place instead, I think we would have had an awesome sunset view). Next time, I’ll try the other place. I am determined to get a good sunset overlooking Lake Clementine. We waited around for about 30 minutes for the sun to set. I was still hoping for some decent colors to show in the sky. They never did. Jadon took some pictures with his camera as well. He was attempting to photograph some dragonflies, and he got a really good shot of one, I thought.

When we were done photographing, we started back up the hill. Of course the sun had already set and it got dark fairly quickly. It was well after dark when we finally arrived back at the car. I had my light of course, and it was an easy trail to follow in the dark. We took our time hiking back up the hill, and even saw some bats flying overhead in the dusky light. We had a great time, even though it was not a spectacular sunset.