Santa Fe is Cool

We spent a full day in Santa Fe. This is a town that is powered almost exclusively by art galleries and by the rich folks from Dallas who don't realize that we are in a recession. They refer to Santa Fe as the Texan Alps. We spent half a day walking the length of Canyon Road which is lined, on both sides of its 1 1/2 mile length, by art galleries. Some of the art was actually pretty good, but there was way too much bronze statuary. I can only assume that this stuff is popular in the Dallas suburbs. Carol was really hoping to find a Santos statue to add to our collection but she got discouraged by the prices for the better pieces. I think it's a sign of artistic sophistication when you can't afford the art that appeals to you. Santa Fe has some really good restaurants, as well.

From Santa Fe to Sedona is a seven hour drive. It took us fourteen. We stopped in almost every town along the way to look for vestiges of old Route 66. It was a very confusing experience for me to try and reconcile my memories of traveling on this road 49 years ago with the reconstructed nostalgia-fest that Route 66 has become. I took a lot of pictures, but I am not particularly happy with the results as I seem to have lost focus on what I wanted to capture. We did find Radiator Springs and its WigWam Motel, howerer; aka Holbrook, AZ. We also stopped at the Petrified Forest National Park. The petrified part was not all that interesting, but the park also included parts of the painted desert, and that was pretty spectacular. We were pretty tired by the time we got into Sedona. We'll have more to say on our stay there, later. Tomorrow, we are off to Barstow, CA, and we will be hitting the Route 66 mother lode along the way. It will be another long day.

Wyatt Earp Slept Here...

...and so did Doc Holiday, Jesse James, Bat Masterson, Kit Carson, Billy the Kid, Buffalo Bill Cody, Annie Oakley, Zane Grey, and Fredrick Remington. But not all at the same time. The place I'm talking about is the St. James Hotel, located about 2 miles outside the town of Cimarron, New Mexico. How all of these people found this place is beyond me as it is in the middle of nowhere. But they, and many others (mostly outlaws) did find it, and 26 of them died here over the years in gunfights. You can still see bullet holes in the tin ceiling of the saloon. When the proprietor added hotel rooms above the saloon, he had to reinforce the floor so that the guests would not be inconvenienced (i.e. killed) by the exuberance of the saloon patrons below. Wyatt Earp and his brother Morgan met up with Doc Holiday here, on their way to Tombstone where everything turned out OK a few days later. Buffalo Bill met Annie Oakley here for the first time and offered a position in his wild west show over dinner in the hotel restaurant. Zane Grey wrote his novel Fighting Caravans while staying in room 22.

From Cimarron, it is just a couple of hours to Taos, where we spent the night. We stayed in an upscale hippie-inspired resort/spa/healing center where everyone spoke in slow soothing voices. The room was really nice and Carol enjoyed the pool and hot tub, and we had a fireplace in our room. The town of Taos, itself, was a bit of a disappointment to me. I really can't see what the big deal is, other than as a jumping off point to all of the really cool places to see in the vicinity. Places like Taos Pueblo which really was worth the visit. We took the high road from Taos to Santa Fe and stopped off at another Pueblo (pueblo means Indian community) and a couple of historic old chapels, including the Santuario do Chimayo - a very special place.

Down Under Cripple Creek

One of the photos is from “Garden of the Gods”. An incredible rock formation that we visited in late afternoon and early morning the next day. Quite dramatic and lovely.

After our walk at Garden of the Gods we spent the day traveling through aspen mountains and visiting ghost towns and gold mines ending up in Cripple Creek Colorado. Cripple Creek gold mines pulled more gold out of their mines than all the gold gathered during the California Gold rush. The town is at about 10,000 ft, the deepest mine at 3,500ft down from the surface. The type of gold mining is called “hard rock” mining, which based on what I saw and heard in the Mollie Kathleen mine that I visited means a lot of dust, and even more earth shaking noise.

I went down in a small cage that held 6 or 7 adults. We started out with drama, as one of the tourists fainted and we had to pull her out of the cage before going down. Mike was smart as usual and thought that only one of us should “experience” the mine (they still actively mine for gold in it-which means mostly the use of dynamite on the levels where they don’t take the tourists). So he stayed topside and I went down 1,000 ft to the 10th level along with about 10 visitors and one miner. Needless to say it was one of the most exciting things I have ever done. He demonstrated all the equipment from the 1800;s to the present and we could hear the explosions above us as we walked and rode through the tunnels(whether or not they were mining when we were there I don’t know. But the mine is for sure active during the Nov to Feb non tourist season where they continue to pull out gold each day. I was “pumped” when we got to the surface. As you can see from the photo of me “emerging”.

Antelope Freeway (twelve miles*)

Yesterday we drove from Missoula to Billings, MT. This turned out to be only about halfway across what turns out to be a very large state. We ate dinner al fresco at a really good steak house in Billing's historic district. Great food. BTW, it turns out that every town and city in Montana and Wyoming (and probably Colorado) has an "historic district". I think that this just an excuse for not cleaning up the downtown areas.

Today was our big travel day - about 500 miles from Billings to Cheyenne, WY. We still found time to stop for a couple of hours at the Little Big Horn Battlefield. It used to be called the Custer Battlefield but the Sioux, Arapaho, Crow, and other indian nations that were involved in the battle got really pissy over that name so, in a fit of political correctness, the name was changed in 1991. They have done a really good job in explaining and making sense of what was a very chaotic series of skirmishes. Well worth a visit. The rest of the day was spent on the road and we arrived in Cheyenne about 7pm. Not much to report about the drive except that we saw many herds of pronhorm antelope. OK, so no big deal, but we thought it was cool enough that we kept pointing them out to each other for 500 miles. Like I said, there was not a lot to see in Wyoming.

carol here...I just loved the geological formations-hills of rock, shale piles, carved butte tops that looked like forts or castles with their tops cut off. While trying to explain some of the formations to Mike his only comment was that Geology was the "easy" science for slackers in college...well, I think he appreciated my tutorial as the drive did get a little boring at times. My absolute favorite section of the 500 miles was the Montana sections in the north. Wyoming is definately flat....looking forward to Garden of the Gods tomorrow.

We had another great meal tonight at the Capitol Cafe in downtown Cheyenne. Things were going great until Carol pointed out that since Cheyenne was once Dick Cheney's home town, that he probably had eaten here. That sort of put me off my dinner.

*Firesign Theatre - look it up

Road Trip

We're off to L.A. by way of Wyoming. This routing will also find us driving through Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. The idea is to travel as much of old Route 66 as we can find. I'm really looking forward to visiting Radiator Springs. Actually, Carol has gotten a head start on me as she has been in Montana visiting family for the past week. I will catch up with her on Thursday. Don't expect much for the first couple of days. We will be going through eastern Wyoming which has nothing (NOTHING!) of interest to see. If we spot a buffalo, we will stop to take a picture, otherwise we will be doing the speed limit (+10 mph) until we hit Colorado.

Shooting the Moon

Last June, I went to Kerry Park on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle to shoot the full moon rising over the city. I wasn't the only one there. Apparently, many other photographers had gotten the word about this full moon business. Now, I know that the moon is full for a couple of nights each month, but only the Strawberry Moon (in June) rises such that it appears behind the cityscape when taken from this spot. It was a lot of fun, and I took dozens of photographs in the hope that one would turn out nicely. It had to, because there are no do-overs... until next year.

Art is Popular When it Rains

When you take a vacation trip to New York, you will invariably make plans to visit at least one of the great museums that the city has to offer. The heavy hitters in this category include MOMA, the Guggenheim, the Whitney and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met). Each of these has something unique to offer. The Guggenheim has got the funky Frank Lloyd Wright motif, MOMA has its modern art and photography collections, and the Whitney has got edgy cool. And the Met is just plain big. But, sometimes the choice of which one to visit comes down to which one is closest. If you happen to be in Central Park, then the Met wins, hands down.

I said the Met was big. I mean really big. Like it has five restaurants, big. Its permanent exhibits include room after room of Dutch masters and impressionists. There are two rooms with nothing but Cézannes. All fabulous stuff, but after a while, it becomes a bit overwhelming. I found myself adding up the presumed values of all of the paintings that I liked. When I hit $500 million or so I started to replay the museum heist scenes from The Thomas Crown Affair in my head to see if any of the schemes might actually work. I don’t think so.

After three hours, it was time to leave. On returning to the entrance lobby we observed that there were now about five times as many people milling about as when we arrived. Then I looked outside. It was pouring. Obviously, the appreciation of great art is directly proportional to the nastiness of the weather. In any case, the rain gave us a good excuse to try out the museum’s wine bar.

Keeping America Safe from the Spanish Armada

I spent the day Saturday visiting Fort Worden and Fort Flagler on the Olympic Peninsula. These forts, along with Fort Casey on Whidbey Island, protected the entrance to Puget Sound from foreign naval invasion. It is not really clear to me who the threat was back in 1898 when we built these fortifications but since we were fighting a war with Spain at the time (we won, BTW) I can only assume it was them. In any case, the forts are actually massive concrete gun emplacements. They took ten years to build and the army began disassembling them almost as soon as they were completed - sending the guns off to Europe to fight against the Germans (but not the Spanish) in World War I. The army finally gave up on the idea of protecting Washington's waterways in 1976 and turned the forts over to the state for use as parks. The state turned the barracks, mess halls and other Victorian-era buildings in to conference centers but they were stumped when it came to re-purposing the concrete bunkers. In the end, they decided to put up informational signs and historical markers and then just turn the public loose on them. The graffiti artists answered the call.

There Are No Squirrels on Maui

I have no idea whether Maui has squirrels, or not, but I doubt it. If there are squirrels on Maui, I’m betting that they are not indigenous. They would have had to be introduced – possibly by the same guy that released European starlings into New York’s Central Park in the 1850’s. The jerk. I’m sure that I could definitively answer the squirrel question with a quick Google search, but I’m too afraid of being disappointed by the answer. At this juncture, I’m prepared to stick with my original assertion regardless of the facts.

There really is no good segue from Hawaiian rodents to still lifes, but I made a couple more, and here they are. I think I now have this whole ‘low-key’ approach down and I’m ready to try some other lighting techniques. Once I get more comfortable with artificial lighting (particularly strobes), I will be ready to move on to portraits. I’ll probably start with the dogs before I move on to people. BTW, ‘low-key’ refers lighting that accentuates contours by throwing deep shadows. It is usually accomplished with one, or maybe two, lights.

I’m also pretty sure that there are no bears in Africa.

Rainy (snowy) Day Stuff

I am so bored that I have taken to photographing toasters. Not really bored, but I am too spoiled to go trudging out into the wilderness to take pictures when it is this cold outside. I prefer to endure hardship when its warmer. Anyway, I have decided to try my hand at still lifes. A still life is usually an artificial arrangement of objects that stays put and doesn't talk back. Usually they are constructed indoors where it is warm. The key to a successful still life is an artistic and appealing arrangement coupled with dramatic and creative lighting. This is very time-consuming to get right. A perfect activity when there is a blizzard (drizzle) howling outside.

So here are a couple of examples of what I have been up to. I will probably do more because it is supposed to stay cold for the rest of the week. I have bought a new studio strobe to help me get the lighting right (you can never have too many strobes). It should arrive next week.