Bucks Lake Nightscape Postcard

I was on a spring fishing trip with a buddy of mine to Bucks Lake in Plumas County, California. On the first morning in camp I thought I had a bear outside my trailer. It turned out to just be my buddy stumbling around in the dark outside his camper. It was right at the end of astronomical darkness and the moon had set, so I walked down to the shore and took a look at the sky. The galactic core of our wonderful little galaxy was sitting in a nice spot above the mouth of Mill Creek where we were camped, so I scrambled back up to my truck and grabbed some gear. I didn't take my astro-modded camera or star tracker on the trip, so I had to go "old school" with my normal daytime gear, but I made do. By the time I hurried and found something that looked like a composition in the dark, it was most certainly outside official "night" and into astronomical twilight, but there was still a fair amount of visible detail in the galactic core and I sometimes like the bluer sky tones I capture at that time. All in all, I'm pleased with the image, especially considering that it was about as spontaneous for a nightscape image as I'd ever dare to attempt.