Rhyolite, Nevada and more sepia pictures.

Readers of the comments on my first set of sepia pictures will know that I had an inquiry about where this picture was taken.

Karen, rather than put this in the comments section, I decided to make it another admission to the TP:Sepia group.

Fortunately I keep my pictures in chronological order, so it wasn’t too hard to track  down where the picture was taken.  Rhyolite, Nevada is about 100 miles (162 km) northwest of Las Vegas, just 9 miles (15 km) from the California border. It’s on a nicely paved road, just about a 2 miles (3 km) off Nevada SR 374.   The bicycle is actually before you get to the actual city ruins, there is a little enclave or weird art work strewn around the hillside.  Then just a short drive up the hill you see the first buildings of what used to be the main street of Rhyolite.  I left a couple of them in full color, as you’ll see they would have lost a lot in the transition to sepia.

An old wagon down by the weird artwork.

This rock spiral was the first thing we saw.

A big iron sculpture of a miner and a, a penguin?  I’ve heard of a canary in a coal mine, but never a penguin.

A concrete couch with inlaid tiles.

And it’s backside.

It looked like it could have been an entrance to an old mine, or some sort of water delivery system.

Buildings down by the artwork.

This one looked a big concrete “lego woman”.  Weird thing to be out there in the middle of nowhere.

More of the ghostly sheets, this time they form the “Last Supper”.

This was on top of a pole, not quite sure what it is supposed to be.

The Rhyolite Merchantile.

Inside the school.

A couple more buildings on the main strip.

Rattlesnakes.  Gotta love those rattlesnakes.

Old Union Pacific caboose in what used to be the middle of town.

Inside the caboose.

Looking down towards the other buildings from the middle of town.

The old railroad station (and casino).

Parrot attitude

A young man named John received a parrot as a gift. The parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary. Every word out of the bird's' mouth was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity.  John tried and tried to change the bird's attitude by consistently saying only polite words, playing soft music and anything else he could think of to 'clean up' the bird's vocabulary.

Finally, John was fed up and he yelled at the parrot. The  parrot yelled back. John shook the parrot and the parrot got angrier and even more rude. John, in desperation, threw up his hand, grabbed the bird and put him in the freezer. For a few minutes the parrot squawked and kicked and screamed.  Then suddenly there was total quiet.  Not a peep was heard for over a minute.

Fearing that he'd hurt the parrot, John quickly opened the door to the freezer.  The parrot calmly stepped out onto John's outstretched arms and said "I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions.  I'm sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully intend to do everything I can to correct my rude and   unforgivable behavior."  John was stunned at the change in the bird's attitude. 

As he was about to ask the parrot what had made such a dramatic change in his behavior, the bird spoke-up, very softly, "May I ask what the turkey did?"

Rachel

Sepia, a look through the old west.

In the summer of ‘08 I spent two weeks driving around Utah, Nevada and California looking at ghost towns.  The first week, Writer and I cruised the Moab area, the second week my older brother and I went through Nevada, clipped the edge of California and back.  These pictures are all from that trip.

A tombstone in an old graveyard outside of Sego, Utah.

The only house, but not the only building, left in Sego.

Inside an abandoned cafe in the half-ghost town of Thompson, Utah.

On top of a fridge in the office of the abandoned Thompson Motel.

A scavenger in flight looking for his/her next meal.

My brother at the storefront in Brodie, California, and incredibly well preserved ghost town.

I went through the 3,000 pictures I took on that trip and, being very reserved, cut down all my sepia pictures to a mere 79.  I didn’t want to post them all here, many people won’t want to take the time to look at them all.  But, if you are interested, please check out the gallery.

View Full Album

If you want to show off your pictures, or just see a whole bunch more really cool sepia pictures, taken by a lot of different people, click on the link below.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Life lesson #4,823.72

When it’s 16°F (-9°C) out, be sure to warm up your car before you take it through one of those automatic car washes.

One of the benefits of working at the Chevron is that I get a free supreme car wash every week.  So when I got off work tonight I decided to run the car through the wash.  The supreme runs around your car twice spraying it down with soap, lets it soak for 60 seconds, high power rinses twice, wax, rinse and finally a low power spot-free rinse.  It also uses heated water for all these.

I could tell I was in trouble before the first round of soap was done.  My car was covered with a sheet of soapy ice.  The second time around simply added a second layer of ice.  I turned on the wipers and they just slid right over the sheet.  Nada.  Quick, turn on the rear-window deicer and the front heat.  High powered rinse comes around melts it a little bit.  I turn on the wipers for the second rinse and that breaks up the ice a little bit.  With the heater, deicer and wipers (both front and back) going through the rest of the cycles it cleared things off enough to see where I was going driving back to the front of the store.  (The pictures shows the frozen soap-ice that still remained on the passenger door window after the wash was over).  I went in, warned my coworker that she should let her car warm up before she washed hers, and got another wash to get the rest of the soap off the car.

Second time around, when the car had warmed up, worked a lot better.

I also want to give a shout out to the guy in this other picture for the super-duper excellent job he did of cleaning the snow off his car.  Bravo, dude.  Makes me feel incredibly safe knowing that there are people like you driving around on these wintery days.  And I suppose you talk on your phone while driving, too.

Storm of the decade.

State offices closed early.  Schools cancelled all after school activities and, at least our district, locked the buildings at 3 PM.  Rocky Mountain Power mobilized their repair crews in anticipation of widespread power outages.  Utah Department of Transportation was putting down sand and salt on my street even before the storm hit.  Weathermen predicted up to a foot of snow on the valley floor.

Now, I’m not saying all this preparation was uncalled for.  I got a little weather lesson from my own personal ex-TV weatherman (who is now a teacher at my school).  He showed me the latest satellite images, a huge cold front coming from the north sucking up the moisture of a wet system coming from the south.  I could hear the excitement in his voice. The video was ominous.  As soon as the kids were out of the building the staff fled the school like rats off a sinking ship.

I watched out the window, heat turned up higher than usual just in case the power went out.  5:00 came and went with just a trace of snow.  6:00 it was snowing heavily, but by 7:30 it had already slowed down.  Figuring the bulk of the storm would hit in the middle of the night I started getting ready for bed, figuring I’d wake up to ton of snow outside.

Ton my butt.  Not even enough to hold up my ruler so I could get a picture of how deep it was.  2 1/2 inches.  That’s inches, not feet.  The Utah Highway Patrol reported a total of 127 accidents statewide, only 9 with injuries.  The power company reported there were only 208 people without power in the Salt Lake Valley.  Close to a million people live in the valley.

Talk about totally underwhelming.  Now all that’s left behind of this storm is the thing I dislike the most: bitter cold.  According to my cheap, notoriously wrong, outdoor thermometer, it’s right around 20 degrees F out there.

Disappointment of the decade is more like it.