Illilouette Fall, Yosemite

Couple of old photos of Illilouette Fall in Yosemite. I agree this is a bit of a disorienting angle, and I apologize for any vertigo the photos might inspire. It's partly due to my not holding the camera entirely straight, and somewhat due to my not owning a camera with a zoom lens back then. Other photos I've seen of the falls seem to indicate it really needs a wider angle than what I had with me at the time. So the only lesson I can really draw here is that I probably ought to go back and see what modern technology and the ability to afford same can do. Which is of course counterbalanced by the little problem of not being 20-something anymore, so the hike itself may no longer be quite the same easy jaunt I remember it being last time.

Nevada Fall, Yosemite

Some photos of Nevada Fall, also in Yosemite. The National Park Service seems to want to use "Fall", singular, in Yosemite when referring to a single waterfall. I guess that makes sense, although it's a little jarring to someone used to Pacific Northwest usage, in which all waterfalls are "Falls". If any linguists out there would like to explain this situation and how it came about, I'd love to hear about it.

I'm not 100% sure the second photo is Nevada Fall; I neglected to write names on the backs of photos at the time, so I'm having to go back and try to identify places based on their resemblance to Google Image search results. So if I misidentify something, I humbly apologize and also blame the entire rest of the internet for leading me astray.

Yosemite Falls

A couple of old photos of Yosemite Falls, in Yosemite National Park. I am willing to stipulate that better photos than mine exist of these falls, and this is also true for everything else in Yosemite, and probably all of the Sierras for that matter. But hey.

Squirrels, Yosemite

Portal

Couple of photos of a small sculpture called "Portal", which sits in front of a construction company office on 1st Avenue a few blocks south of I-405. I like the hammers-forming-an-archway concept. Some people might call it silly, but I think it works, and it fits where it's at. That isn't something I say a lot, or at least I haven't said it very much recently that I can recall.

If you're curious, the sculptor's website has some photos of other works of his here.

Corn Palace

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So here's the one and only Corn Palace, the famous municipal auditorium in Mitchell, South Dakota. Every year the exterior of the building is decorated with multicolored murals made of corn. The murals are slowly eaten by birds over the course of the next year, and after the next harvest a fresh new mural design goes up. The murals shown here date to 1996-97 and have a hunting and fishing theme. Which I imagine is a popular theme in this part of the world.

Having come from a non-corn-growing part of the country, we had never heard of the place when we stumbled across it. But apparently it's a major tourist attraction in this part of the world. There's even a gift shop across the street, offering Corn Palace-themed knicknacks and doodads. We wandered inside to look around, but inside it just looks like any old small town auditorium. They were setting up for a high school basketball game and we didn't want to get in the way, so we didn't stick around long.

As a small bonus (since I only have one picture of the Corn Palace itself), here's a picture of the town's cool Art Deco City Hall, which sits right next door to the Corn Palace.

Elvis's Birthplace, Tupelo MS

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One more photo from Tupelo, MS, before we hit the road again. This little shotgun shack just happens to be the birthplace of Elvis Presley, which is now part of a city park, with the street in front of it also named in his honor. Elvis was a bit before my time; I vaguely recall seeing him on TV in his white rhinestone jumpsuit days, but that's about it. I was in Tupelo anyway to visit a Civil War site and figured I might as well take a peek at The King's humble origins. So I did, and took a photo, and here it is. You're welcome.

Tupelo National Battlefield, Tupelo MS

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More old photos from the archives, this time from Tupelo National Battlefield in Tupelo, Mississippi. I was driving through the Deep South in a Ryder truck, headed a few states east of here, and I figured I probably ought to stop and see at least one Civil War site on the way. Understand that I've never been a Civil War buff, or a war buff of any kind. I wasn't really interested in spending days up to my eyes in gory and distasteful 1860s history.

With that in mind, I think I picked the right place. It's small, for one thing, just a single acre of land conveniently located in central Tupelo, Mississippi. It's just a grassy area with a cannon and a couple of memorials: A large commemorating the soldiers from both sides, but with an eagle on top and what looks like a Union shield design. Then there's a smaller, somewhat newer one commemorating "Our Confederate Dead That Gave Their Lives In Battle", supposedly "For Their Rights". As far as I'm concerned, the cannon & memorials pretty much sum up the entire conflict in a nutshell for non-enthusiasts, visitable in maybe 5 or 10 minutes.

Another nice thing is that, since it just comes across as a normal city park, it's pretty hard to visualize it being the site of 20,000 soldiers trying to kill or maim each other. Nice, I mean, for those of us who aren't keen on visualizing that sort of thing. In a related note, I don't know whether this little acre ever attracts Civil War reenactors, but the size of the place puts an upper bound on how many can show up, so that counts as a plus also.

My original plan had been to stop here and then go drive on the scenic Natchez Trace Parkway for a bit, but at the parkway visitor center a local cop insisted my Ryder truck was a commercial vehicle and thus wasn't allowed onto the road. I figured arguing my case with a Mississippi policeman might be unwise, especially if there was a chance he might be right. so I hopped back on US 78 and continued on east, and so far I haven't been back.

Steamboat Park, Cornelius

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A few photos of Steamboat Park, on a bend of the Tualatin River out in Cornelius. The name refers to a brief era when commercial steamboats plied the river, shipping grain and produce downstream to market. Feel free to be amazed and doubtful about that; the Tualatin isn't very wide or deep, it meanders all over the place, and it's always full of logs and other obstructions. The Tualatin Riverkeeper guide to the river doesn't recommend boating upstream of Hillsboro, even in a canoe or kayak. So the Tualatin River's steamboats can't have been very big. A pdf about the city's points of interest describes those days:

So even though the Tualatin was narrow, shallow and overhung with tree limbs, it was the best way farmers could get their wheat, and later their fruit and timber to market. In 1867, the Oregonian noted that piloting a steamship down the river was not an easy task: “In summer, the size and great number of mosquitoes sometimes obscure the vision of the captain or attack him so furiously as to compel him to let go of the wheel…. collisions with the bank are not infrequent.”

The steamboat era ended when the railroad came to town.

In fact, the city of Cornelius is named after the guy who convinced the railroad to come to town, if that gives you any idea. It's a shame, really. It's fun to imagine that the Tualatin once had a vanished era of glamorous Mississippi-style paddlewheel steamers, full of riverboat gamblers and fancy ladies and mysterious strangers and intrigue galore, with Cornelius's answer to Mark Twain writing it all down for posterity.

The park doesn't currently have a lot that harks back to the steamboat era. The city's discussed putting up interpretive signs, but they aren't the region's most affluent city and they don't have a big budget to work with, so it hasn't happened yet. They received a Metro grant some years ago to do habitat restoration along the river, and this July they discussed getting a federal grant to put in a boat launch for non-motorized boats (as there's no river access in the park at all right now), which would put the interpretive sign plan on hold again. Until, I imagine, grant money becomes available, or someone volunteers.

Organ Pipe Cactus, Arizona

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Some photos from Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, in a remote corner of southern Arizona. The landscape isn't as dramatic as some other parts of the state, but the monument -- along with the adjacent and even more remote Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge -- protects a big chunk of intact Sonoran Desert ecosystem, including the monument's namesake cactus. So this may be more of a place for close up and macro photos than for broad desert vistas. It's kind of a moot point since I had neither the inclination or the gear to do that back then. Which is a shame, in retrospect; the resulting photos might have given a clearer sense of why I felt this was a high point of the trip.

Looking over these photos, it also occurs to me that I don't have any really good examples of the aforementioned organ pipe cactus. I'm not totally surprised by that; as a native of the Pacific Northwest, all cactuses pretty much look alike to me. I can tell conifers apart, and I can tell you all sorts of boring facts about them if called upon (which is rare). Cactuses, not so much. Same goes for palm trees, come to think of it.

Center St. Bridge, Cleveland

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Today's adventure takes us back to Cleveland, to the historic Center St. Bridge. I did actually walk across this one and back, on my way to the city's shiny new aquarium. As I've mentioned before, I've always thought swing-span bridges were cool. This one has its central pivot on the west bank of the river rather than in the middle, so as not to obstruct river traffic. Which is important since the Cuyahoga is remarkably narrow given all the shipping traffic it sees. The downside of this is that there's a nice, grassy parklike area on the west bank where the span goes when it pivots out of the way, with a high fence and big signs warning you for god's sake never never go in there, lest you get conked over the head by a bridge. Which would be bad. This seems like reasonable advice to me, really.

Another cool thing about the bridge is that the vastly higher and larger Detroit-Superior Bridge passes directly over it, which makes for some interesting photo opportunities. Which weren't fully exploited this time around as I was busy freezing my fingers off and trying not to drop lenses or lose my phone or that sort of thing.

A few interesting links to pass along about the bridge, mostly of a historical nature:

• HistoricBridges.org
• Cleveland Memory at Cleveland State University.
• A Cleveland Magazine article about historic bridges of the Flats.
• A page about the city's bridges in Case Western Reserve's Encyclopedia of Cleveland.
• Engineering plans for the bridge, also at Case Western Reserve.

Font's Point, Borrego Badlands

Some old photos from a brief stop at Font's Point in the Borrego Badlands, part of California's huge Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, east of San Diego. If I were to go back there at some point, that would be the thing that would finally make me break down and learn to do HDR photography. I've never been a huge HDR fan, but the place seems ideally suited to it.

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Mountains, Death Valley

Salt Creek, Death Valley

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A few more old photos from Death Valley, this time from Salt Creek, a small, salty stream that eventually empties into the Death Valley salt flats. The creek merits a boardwalk nature trail because it's the sole home of the endangered Salt Creek pupfish, a tiny fish that's adapted to live in the creek's salty and often hot water. I did see a few of the fish but somehow ended up without any photos of them, just a few of the nature trail and plants along it. The existence of the plants here is kind of remarkable too, but I've got to say they're no desert pupfish. So if you want to see more pupfish, there are a few decent photos here. There are also a number of YouTube videos of the fish, like this for example, if you're interested.

Badwater, Death Valley

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Old photos from Badwater, Death Valley, the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level. Ok, the lowest point that isn't underwater, if you really want to split hairs.

Given the name, you might be curious about what the water's like. You're in luck, because I went ahead and tried a drop or two of the stuff. It tastes the way you'd expect desert salt flats water would taste: Salty, kind of alkaline, probably with other goop dissolved in it. I wouldn't have willingly drunk more of it, I'll put it that way.