steamy visit to the lake at Nicasio

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photo by Donald Kinney

Welcome to Nicasio Reservoir. Here, a warm lake is bathed in cool air on a frigid morning. Poof--fog--it can be amazing. Vapors of the gods...



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And of course, the obligatory Beatles: Here comes the sun



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A slice of lake, with fog as a topping.



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And fog that will shortly vanish into a clear day. Start of another one.


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morning; drama and splendor

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photo by Donald Kinney

morning;



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photo by Donald Kinney

drama

[ image above originally appeared on AphotoAday September 13, 2011 ]



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and splendor

[ image above originally appeared on AphotoAday September 13, 2011 ]

early morning in San Francisco

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Although I live about 20 miles to the north in Marin County, I consider San Francisco to be my own. I like to visit very, very early in the morning...



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When loose books are still flying...



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And flashing on and off...



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Where I can squeeze off a few shots in the narrow alleys of NorthBeach...



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And peek into the shops of Chinatown to feel about 8000 miles away.


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sunset reflections at Rodeo Beach

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And although my abode couldn't be any lonelier now that my beloved Kitty isn't around anymore, it's great to be back home. Once again I have the sunrise on the bayside and the sunset on the oceanside, and of course, a whole lot of empty space between my ears...



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So, late Wednesday afternoon I bundled up, geared up, and got my tired old bones down to one of my favorite places, Rodeo Beach in the Marin Headlands--it's within spitting-distance of the Golden Gate Bridge.



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The sun was going down fast, and of course this time of year it sinks into the ocean a little bit earlier each day.



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Nos vemos más tarde, el sol.

נתראה אחר כך, שמש.

A plus tard, dim.

再见，太阳。

Eesay ouyay aterlay, unsay.

See you later, sun.



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perhaps a message from God

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The weather turned nasty while I was in the middle of my trip. Snow and high winds forced me down to the lower elevations. I'm going to have to return next year--perhaps a bit earlier in the year--to pay my respects to two of my favorite places, Bristlecone Pines in the White Mountains and Death Valley.

But as I got closer and closer towards home I could see some interesting clouds dancing across the top of my beloved Mount Tamalpais. And although I am not a very religious person, I took it as a sign from God that I was home and this is the place I belong. Amen...



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I had intended to return home via Tioga Pass and Yosemite so it wasn't my idea, because of the weather, that I had to make the long and somewhat uninteresting trip around the southern end of the Sierra and over towards Bakersfield so I could start on the long, long way home.



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But I was rewarded with some rather dramatic cloud formations, which kept my spirits up.



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And it's nice to be home, although I can't wait to go back next year, Lord willing. Like I mentioned, I am not a terribly religious person, but when I see clouds like this I sometimes begin to wonder...


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Mount Whitney and Lone Pine Peak

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photo by Donald Kinney

Yesterday I was showing Ansel Adams' gnarly rocks that had eluded me for so many years, but this image was taken in the same spot--I just panned the camera 90 degrees to the right.

Lone Pine Peak is on the right, and Mount Whitney is just barely visible in this image towards the left.



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Late afternoon in the Sierra. That's Mount Whitney on the left. The dark rocks are part of the Alabama Hills in the Tuttle Creek area.

Going back 50 years ago when I was a mere whipper-snapper of 14, I was privileged to join my aunt and uncle on a Mount Whitney backpacking adventure. Unfortunately we were prevented in reaching the summit of Mount Whitney--14,191 feet and the highest spot in the Continental United States--due to a horrendous storm that unleashed it's fury on us during our night stay at Whitney Outpost Camp at about 11,000 feet.



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A better view, perhaps, of Mount Whitney.



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And again, a shot of Lone Pine Peak, which is often confused with Mount Whitney itself. As I mentioned yesterday, this area has appeared as a backdrop in hundreds of wild-west movies and shorts. Bang-bang, you're dead!


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Alabama Hills, Owens Valley, eastern California

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If you've already read my biography on what I call my "big" site, then you know that I was extremely fortunate in being able to meet with Ansel Adams 48 years ago when I was a mere lad of 16.

I owned most of Ansel Adams' books and was in awe of his compositions and marvelous handling of black and white tones, so when his rendering of these same exact rocks in the photo above appeared in an article he had written for PopularPhotography Magazine I knew I had to find these dramatic rocks--I thought it would be an easy task, but it wasn't.



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Over the years I visited the Alabama Hills a handful of times, always searching for these specific rocks but they had always eluded me until this latest trip when I finally decided to check out Tuttle Creek Road, a road which branches out to the left off of Whitney Portal Road, just to the west of the small town of Lone Pine. Tuttle Creek Road doesn't connect with any of the other roads in the Alabama Hills which may explain why I had such a difficult time finding this particular rock formation.



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You may not have heard of the Alabama Hills, but they've been used as a backdrop in hundreds of cowboy movies and short features over the years. The main (dirt) road that winds it way through the Alabama Hills is appropriately named "Movie Road". At any moment one might expect Hop-A-Long Cassidy to peek from around one of the rounded boulders and empty his revolver at the bad-guys.



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The Alabama Hills is nestled below the Whitney Range which looms several thousand feet overhead to the west.

[source:  Wikipedia]   The rounded contours of the Alabamas contrast with the sharp ridges of the Sierra Nevada to the west. Though this might suggest that they formed from a different orogeny, the Alabamas are the same age as the nearby Sierras. The difference in wear can be accounted for by different patterns of erosion.

Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States, towers several thousand feet above this low range, which itself is 1,500 feet (460 m) above the floor of Owens Valley. However, gravity surveys indicate that the Owens Valley is filled with about 10,000 feet (3,000 m) of sediment and that the Alabamas are the tip of a very steep escarpment. This feature may have been created by many earthquakes similar to the 1872 Lone Pine earthquake which, in a single event, caused a vertical displacement of 15–20 feet.

There are two main types of rock exposed at Alabama Hills. One is an orange, drab weathered metamorphosed volcanic rock that is 150-200 million years old. The other type of rock exposed here is 90 million year old granite which weathers to potato-shaped large boulders, many of which stand on end due to spheroidal weathering acting on many nearly vertical joints in the rock.

Dozens of natural arches are among the main attractions at the Alabama Hills. They can be accessed by short hikes from the Whitney Portal Road, the Movie Flat Road and the Horseshoe Meadows Road. Among the notable features of the area are: Mobius Arch, Lathe Arch, the Eye of Alabama and Whitney Portal Arch.

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Sawtooth Range, Owens Valley, California

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Still charged with excitement and a sense of adventure from my visit to Bodie, I started making my way down the Owens Valley and got my first view of the jagged cliffs of the Sierra Nevada range.



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[source  Wikipedia]  The character of the range is shaped by its geology and ecology. More than 100 million years ago, granite formed deep underground. The range started to uplift 4 million years ago, and erosion by glaciers exposed the granite and formed the light-colored mountains and cliffs that make up the range. The uplift caused a wide range of elevations and climates in the Sierra, which are reflected by the presence of five life zones.



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This area is west of Bridgeport and offers hiking and backpacking that isn't for the faint of heart. This is inside the Toyabe National Forest and camping is available near Twin Lakes. Fishing is said to be outstanding here but many fishermen head to the headwaters of the Carson River to the east of Bridgeport.

I've never done any backpacking this far north, but my friend, Surfer-Dude Robert, related a harrowing story about one of his backpacking adventures where his group lost track of the trail they were supposed to be following and needed to make a devil-may-care course correction right across one of those jagged peaks.



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The romance of Bodie

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Well, to put the proper slant on this story, I suppose I had better first explain that it would be a long, long time before indoor plumbing arrived in Bodie. But yes, today the rangers and park employees who live in some of the more intact houses at Bodie are now hooked up to a septic system--but I've got to ask, "where's the romance in that?".



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And I'm sure this cool shack was straight and plumb when it was first built. Alas, how we all tend to bulge and tilt in strange and cruel ways with age.



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This is the residence of James Stuart Cain who arrived in Bodie when he was 25, entered the lumber business and put barges on Mono Lake to transport timber to the Bodie mines. He expanded into wagon freighting and with Thomas Holt, leased the Bodie Railroad and Lumber Company. He and Joe Maguire leased a block of ground from the Standard Mine and Mill and took out $90,000 in gold in 90 days. Standard would not renew the lease, but Cain eventually acquired the company through court action and became the town's principal property owner. [source:  park brochure]

I mentioned Ella M. Cain, Mr. Cain's daughter in yesterday's post--the author of "The Story of Bodie". With the enclosed glass porch, the Cain residence reflected their wealth and importance in the community.



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And while a few got rich, most who came to Bodie worked hard for very little. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention the Chinese immigrants, now mostly forgotten, who did most of the intensive labor. The Chinese lived on the north side of town but today, after a few major fires, not even a trace remains.

Bodie boasted dozens of drinking establishments and houses of ill-repute, but it was the Chinese who popularized the use of opium as a relief for the white miners. Thinking about it, with an abundance of whisky, wild women, and opium, it's rather amazing that anybody had time to mine for gold.

This neatly built brick building was Grandma Johnson's rooming house, which later must have decided to go "upscale" and changed it's name to Dechambeau Hotel. The building also served as Bodie's post-office.

Despite huffing-and-puffing in the thin air at 8300 feet, I felt it important that I make the trip to Bodie--it's on the long list of parks scheduled to be closed by the impoverished State of California. Good bye, Bodie, and thanks for the memories...



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circular mechanical motion at Bodie

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photo by Donald Kinney

All this week I've been trying to find my old book on Bodie--"The Story of Bodie", by Ella M. Cain. My fear is that I loaned it to someone and it is now long gone. But it contained the most wonderful stories about the history of Bodie from this woman who grew up in Bodie.



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My father spotted "The Story of Bodie" at the general store in Bridgeport after our family had just returned to civilization on that rough and dusty road. When he went to pay for the book the lady behind the counter opened up the book and started writing something on the title page. As nicely as he could my dad asked what the hell she was doing and she replied that she was the author and thought we might like an autographed copy.



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Electricity made mining a much more efficient endeavor. One story I remember from the book was about the novelty and newness of having hydroelectric power delivered over a long distance--22 miles to be exact. The technology was new and they built the transmission lines as straight as possible in fear that if the electricity had to turn corners it might fly right off the wires.



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So lets see--even though my Bodie book seems to be long-gone, here's a story from the $2 guidebook I bought on this trip:

Turn left on Park Street. The small sawmill was used for cutting firewood. With snow as much as 20 feet deep, winds up to 100 miles an hour, and temperatures down to 30 or even 40 degrees below zero, plenty of firewood was needed to keep Bodie's poorly constructed houses warm during the winter. The winter of 1878/1879 was especially severe, and Bodie residents, many of thyem new arrivals, were not adequately prepared. Many died of exposure, disease, or violence. Preparing for a Bodie winter was and still is a monumental task.

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Fixing a hole where the rain gets in

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Aside from being in the middle-of-nowhere and difficult to get to, another problem was Bodie's elevation at 8300 feet. Not much of anything useful grows at this altitude, so everything needed for daily life and the operation of the mines and smelters needed to be brought in. This wasn't a small project for an isolated town with a population of 10,000 in it's glory-days.



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Wood for housing and mine construction needed to come long distances and was expensive, but most wood that arrived in Bodie was used to fire steam boilers used as a source of heat in the smelting and refining processes.

It is worth noting that the refining process of low grade ores involved working with deadly chemicals such as cyanide and mercury. And since in those days few people had any idea about the lasting toxic effects of these materials they were used with reckless abandon.

These deadly chemicals remain to this day. Chemicals continue to percolate down into ground water. This problem is not just isolated to Bodie--the entire "Gold Rush" country remains a mess of chemical pollution.



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Just about the time a railroad line was completed to bring Bodie timber from the south end of Mono Lake, the production of electricity from a generator placed at a rapid stream 22 miles away made mining a much more efficient craft.



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It would take decades for the first electric can-opener to be invented but in the meantime miners would carefully cut open and flatten their empty tin cans, recycling them by tacking them to siding and roofs as an extra barrier against the harsh Bodie winters.



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Fixing a hole where the rain gets in.



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Bodie, on the inside

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Rough-and-tumble gold miners were lowered into the depths of hell in the Standard Mine for a sweltering day of work, but when they emerged a long row of drinking and "entertainment" establishments on Main Street provided, I suppose, adequate relief.



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Bodie did have a sheriff and a jail, but general lawlessness prevailed. Being a "bad man" from Bodie was a popular castigation of the day. One little girl who had been told she and her family were moving to Bodie was reported to have included in her prayer; "Good-bye God, we're moving to Bodie".



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But the truth is that very few wives followed their husbands into the gold regions. To my knowledge there was no "Tugboat Annie", and Susan B. Anthony had yet to make much of an impression on these harsh lands. Yet I am guessing many miners were looking for a bit of normalcy in their lives.



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Meals at all hours--sounds like a good idea. I imagine those crusty miners were hungry-as-hell when the alcohol started to wear off. Probably just enough time to wolf-down some grub before being lowered back down into that damn gold mine.



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long, rough and dusty - the road to Bodie

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Been here before or not, when you arrive in Bodie--hopefully with all four wheels still intact--your first exclamation is going to be about the horrendous condition of the road you've just travelled.

Oh, there's two ways in, and the route from the west is slightly better than the route up from Mono Lake, but these two-lane paved mountain roads quickly turn into miles of dusty washboards.



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Part of the dusty 12 mile route into Bodie from Mono Lake to the south.
And that's the town--all of what remains today of Bodie--only about 5 percent is left from what used to be a thriving metropolis with a pronounced wild and lawless western flavor back in the late 1800's.



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Bodie is a mixture of old things and older things.



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[source:  Wikipedia]
The first label of Bodie as a "ghost town" was in 1915. In a time when auto travel was on a rise, many were adventuring into Bodie via automobiles.

The first signs of an official decline occurred in 1912 with the printing of the last Bodie newspaper, The Bodie Miner. In a 1913 book titled California Tourist Guide and Handbook: authentic description of routes of travel and points of interest in California, the authors, Wells and Aubrey Drury described Bodie as a "mining town, which is the center of a large mineral region" and provided reference to two hotels and a railroad operating there.

The San Francisco Chronicle published an article in 1919 to dispute the "ghost town" label.

By 1920, Bodie's population was recorded by the US Federal Census at a total of 120 people.

Despite the decline, Bodie had permanent residents through most of the 20th century, even after a fire ravaged much of the downtown business district in 1932. A post office operated at Bodie from 1877 to 1942.

The last mine closed in 1942, due to War Production Board order L-208, shutting down all nonessential gold mines in the United States. Mining never resumed.



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