Max... On the Road

Mapping Where I've been

2009-07-17T17:31:00.002-04:00

View Discovery2009 in a larger map
Shown above is an interactive Google Map with a route showing the stops I've made on my 2009 cross country road trip. To keep things simple, Google's chosen the route between places -- my actual route involves a lot more miles and a lot more back roads exploration.

Google's route estimates about four thousand miles but my calculations put me at about 5507 at this point.

The Honda Fit has been a great little horse to ride. When I look at my car I worry that I have too much stuff and therefore too much weight. I aim to be a free bird traveling light and easy but my "be prepared" attitude of having lots of stuff gets in the way.

Learning to do without and accept the consequences -- good and bad -- is another part of my journey.

What's next? I'll decide next week. Maybe the Arizona desert to the Grand Canyon for a change of scene or north, deeper into the Colorado Rockies.

It could be the flip of a coin that decides.

* * *

Side note: I have a few blog entries to upload to get current and I'm about ten days behind schedule, so if you've been following along, expect to see a few more entries in on Sunday explaining those missing days.

Santa Fe, New Mexico

2009-07-08T12:00:00.001-04:00

Last weekend I spent four days camped in the mountains just north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. I met some great locals who answered a lot of questions about what life is like in Santa Fe but other than a few trips into town for food, ice or fuel I didn't give myself much time to go exploring.

So yesterday I returned with some chores: Find a landromat and wash clothes, get a routine service check at the Honda dealer, and stock up on food from places like Trader Joe's before I go out into small town America again.

I asked the iPhone to find me a laundromat and for some reason it took four tries to pick one, go to its location and actually find one. I found one in a little plaza, got my laundry started and then visited a local Whole Foods type co-op grocery store for some lunch. When my laundry was done I went over to the Honda dealership and let them do an oil change, tire rotation and air filter changes on the Fit.

So this is pretty boring stuff, huh? I think so too, because its the type of stuff we all do in our home towns. But it wasn't until later that afternoon that I realize I'm comfortable here. There are businesses to support my life like a Honda dealership, a health-concious food store, Whole Food and Trader Joes.

The architecture -- which looks like 2009 as if Fred Flintstone designed it -- is starting to grow on me.

When my brother calls me around 6pm I tell him I'm headed either out of town or back to the local camp site from last weekend because I've seen enough of Santa Fe to get an idea of it and move on. But I can't. After I talk to him for about forty-five minutes I realize I'm comfortable here and not ready to go. It's like meeting a stranger and finding a chemistry between you: it's a nice surprise that you don't get very often.

So I decided then to find one of the little local motels I'd spotted over the weekend. The Thunderbird is an aging 1950s motor lodge in the style I adore with rooms for only $39 an free Wifi. I am not kidding you when I say this, too, is run by indians from india and the lobby smells like curry. I'm totally cool with that.

After I check in, it's still light out and I'm in a good mood so I go exploring. I find the "Plaza" that Annette, the local, had been telling me about over the weekend. The Plaza shoes the Spanish influence in Santa Fe. Don't mistake Spanish for Mexican -- by Spanish I mean european. Santa Fe has a grand Catholic church next to a park-like plaza at the center of their historic downtown. It's beautiful and for the past 17 years they've hosted free music outside in excellent weather... for free.

For the next two hours I take pictures of everything I see in the plaza. The thing I'm most impressed with is the people. They're young and old, bikers, arists, average moms and dads and they all get along...

I don't know where it came from but I'm really starting to like this place.

Nuclear Portraits

2009-07-06T19:30:00.000-04:00

In Los Alamos at the Bradbury Science museum there is a collection of professionally done portraits that hang on the walls of the room showcasing the history of the atomic bomb.

The portraits were taken in the last ten years and are of various people involved in creating or supporting the creation of the atomic bomb within the Los Alamos community. The portraits are part of a book filled with recollections about life in the 1940s when the bomb was being created and everything about Los Alamos including the town itself was kept secret.

This display of portraits really moved me. It shows the people involved in one of the most significant developments of human kind as normal human beings. They're old now, almost all are retired and many have passed. Next to each portrait is a biography explaining the person and their involvement in Los Alamos. Many have photos showing them when they were in their twenties and thirties at Los Alamos. When they were young and times were simpler.

Like the lead characters in the movie Men In Black our popular culture likes to depict people that work for the government on secret projects as different from us, with less emotion and more capability to handle the work than the average person. The truth is the people who built the atomic bomb in secrecy and the people that toil for the government to protect us today are just like us.

This display offers us a chance to see them without the veil and understand them for who they are and what they've done.

The book associated with this display is "They Changed the World: People of the Manhattan Project" by A.J. Melnick

Los Alamos' Bradbury Science Museum

2009-07-06T16:30:00.000-04:00

Today I visited Los Alamos, New Mexico where in the 1940s the Manhattan Project created the world's first nuclear bomb.

My interest in this place comes from all the biographical reading I've done on the people involved. The Richard Feynman biography "Genius" and the Pulitzer prize winning book by Richard Rhodes called simply "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" are deep, complex reads that allow you to appreciate the people involved as genuine human beings and not government henchmen creating weapons of mass destruction.

Los Alamos was selected as the location for the Manhattan project primarily because it was physically far away from other communities. It sits atop a mesa that rises several thousand feet above a valley that separates it and Santa Fe and even today the area surrounding Los Alamos is only lightly populated.

Because the work of the Manhattan project continues at Los Alamos in a government organization called the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the 12,000 residents of Los Alamos live and work in a community that is still isolated from other communities. The town has a somewhat unnatural, artificial feel to it because for the most part the only people there are people who are supporting the work at the lab. This means very little crime, no homelessness, one high school, etc. It's isolation makes it feel like a small town but the affluence of its residents, the quality of the businesses and homes makes it feel like the upper-middle class suburb of a major city.

Almost all of the original buildings from the Manhattan project era that were hastily put up in the early 1940s are now gone. The new LANL complex is located nearby on another mesa. To my surprise I was able to drive through the complex twice. Since 9/11 I've seen access to government property like this go away very quickly in the Washington D.C. area but here I was told the main road through the new lab is always open. When I attempted to drive through on my second time, I asked the checkpoint attendant about the contradiction between an open road and physical checkpoints. He said simply: "We're looking for threatening vehicles that fit a profile." "Is the Honda fit not threatening?" I asked. "Well you do have a large cargo box on a top" he replied. And at that point I knew I ought to shut up and just drive through.

I didn't take any pictures of the lab because I expected to get pounced on by security forces from the bushes nearby, and the city of Los Alamos itself was pretty plain so I didn't think anybody would be interested in them. I did, however, take some photos of the Bradbury Science Museum which is essentially LANL's visitor's center. It's small but very nicely done with some interesting stuff.

If you are reading this from North Korea, please move along there is nothing to see here.

This is a modern day nuclear weapon rigged with testing equipment as it would be setup for an underground nuclear test. The last test was conducted in 1996.

The silver cylinder near the bottom would be a modern day atomic bomb. The rest of the equipment surrounding would be high speed sampling and scientific observation equipment that would record and send back to the surface via fiber optic cable information about the bomb's detonation. The complexities of a nuclear weapon I can understand in an abstract sense but the idea that you can get a lot of good information in milliseconds before a nuclear weapon destroys them is amazing to me.

This is a map at the museum approved by LANL that shows the locations of various sites around Los Alamos. Nuclear weapons, here, Space Death Ray, here, Mutant Monkey Brian that Hears Terrorist Thoughts, over there, you know. But one number appears to be missing!

How do you find a black hole in space? You look for the lack of light and the black hole is in the center. How do you find the next big LANL project? Well don't look where the numbers are, look where they aren't! :)

I'll take the rain instead, thanks.

2009-07-06T13:30:00.000-04:00

This morning just as I finished touring Bandalier National Park, a heavy rain storm started just as I was walking to my car.

My Honda Fit is a cute little hatchback and I'm able to pop the hatch up and stand underneath it in order to use it as a temporary shelter. So this morning I did just that, pulling food from the coolers in back so I could have a sandwich, chips and a soda. It was nice to just stop, relax, eat lunch and not be bothered by the rain. When I was done, I got in my car and drove the 30 minutes or so into Los Alamos to visit the Bradbury Science Museum.

Once I got into Los Alamos I noticed white stuff that looked like snow on the grass in someone's front lawn. I pulled over to discover it was hail. really big, dangerous hail.

Turns out the storm that had just come through Bandalier thirty minutes earler had hit Los Alamos. My location in Bandalier was down in a deep canyon and Los Alamos is sitting high on top of a mesa. That difference and the fact that I didn't get to Los Alamos when I was schedule to today saved my little car some serious damage.

I talked to one resident nearby who said the insurance office was filling up with people who, like her, had smashed windshields and dented hoods from the surprise summer hailstorm. When I took a look at her neighbour's car sitting in the driveway: more damage. When I finally got to the Bradbury Science museum I took a close look at the big Ford pickup sitting next to me. It's hood was covered in dents.. all over the hood, nothing but dents.

I count my blessing on this trip: haven't been hurt, the car hasn't been in an accident, nothing's been stolen, etc. I didn't expect to add "avoided hail storm" to them.

Bandalier National Park

2009-07-06T09:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I traveled from Santa Fe, New Mexico across the valley to Los Alamos and needed somewhere to camp. The map showed Bandalier National Park nearby with a campground so I figured that would be safe, reliable and cheap.

This morning when I woke up I packed up my campsite and figured I ought to see what this park is all about instead of just going straight to Los Alamos. I'd never heard of Bandalier before and figure you probably haven't either. The website search suggested it was an ancient human settlement in a canyon with the opportunity to see what ancient human cave homes looked like. I'm not real excited at this point.

Like a little kid, I'm not much for museums and places where all I can do is look at things and learn about them. I need to touch & feel and experience things in order to appreciate them.

From the entrance of the park I take a two lane road through the desert for a while until it comes to a point where it overlooks a canyon. Ok, it's scenic, I take a few pictures.

Then the road winds steeply down the canyon into a green tree covered valley. I park at the visitor's parking lot and walk through a visitor's center to get on the main trail. It's like a nature walk for a while with little markers pointing out native shrubbery and what not. I keep walking.

In the center of the canyon is the ruins of an ancient village. It's basically four to five foot high rock formations each a little squareish structure that are all connected to one another in a curved shape. There is a single round structure nearby called a Kiva that was the center of religious ceremonies. This is interesting and I take a few pictures but struggle to find a good shot that shows scale and depth and anything compelling.

After that I keep walking on the trail as it winds up to the base of the sheer canyon walls. It was here that the ancient people would carve out spaces in the walls and make homes out of them. As the trail begins in this area the visuals improve and I'm gaining interest.

Then, to my surprise, we get to the first area where you can climb ladders and go into some of the preserved cave spaces. And at this point I'm hooked. A National Park that is interactive and exploratory is a big win in my book.

The trail goes up and down rudimentary stairs, winds around and has some interesting twists and turns. Along the way there is plenty to see and imagine what life would have been like living here such a long time ago.

After I've seen the cave dwellings and taken plenty of shots, I'm feeling good about my time spent here. I follow the trail until it forks with one direction headed back to the visitor's center and another headed to the "Alcove House" with warnings that tell of the 140-foot climb up ladders to the Alcove House and that visitors with health problems for a fear of heights should not attempt to the climb. Oh yes, I am so doing this! I thought in our overly legalistic world danger in Natural Parks such as this would be outlawed?

As I walk the half mile trail to the base of the ladders, certain calculations are going through my head. I'm here alone: what happens if I fall, what could cause me to fall, what do I do if I fall? As well as: What do I do if someone else falls. I like to be prepared for things. This helped me with SCUBA diving and it pays off other situations as well.

When I get to the ladders I watch how other people are climbing. I'm not worried about getting up, I'm more worried about going down. Ladders are easy to climb, but if you don't go slowly and use a slightly different technique going down it's easy to rush, slip and fall.

Climbing the ladders produces instant rewards through better views. Each time I go up a set I'm noting I have to go down backwards, later. When I finally get to the top the Alcove is incredibly large. You could easily fit a small gas station within it. There is one reconstructed Kiva at the top complete with a roof that you can climb a ladder down into one to experience it properly.

I probably spent about 45 minutes at the Alcove, considering what drove the ancient villagers to climb this far up into the side of a canyon. Was it fear of attack from others? From animals? From the elements? From all of that? Probably.

When I'm satisfied I've gotten enough, I start going back down alone with no one to spot me. I move slowly and carefully with each calculated move. My anxiety starts to go away after I've been down a ladder flight or two. I take lots of pictures hoping that for once they catch the depth of the scene so my friends can see just how incredible this experience is.

Once I reach the bottom I have to stop for a while and look up. It's so far away and the people are so small now -- I didn't even notice them so high up when I first arrived here.

This has been a very rewarding experience. I'm completing the hike back to the visitor's center when it starts to rain. I'm thinking about basic, smooth wooden ladders wet with rain and oil from people's hands. I think if I were up in the Alcove during the rain, I'd probably just stay up there a while and not think about going down again.

>Click here to view my full set of photos on Picassa Web Albums

Naturalist Shots - Santa Fe

2009-07-04T14:30:00.000-04:00

What do you see here?

Do you see a tree that has been cut down or do you see one hundred and twenty six (or more) years of growth that started with one little seedling a long time ago. (Yes, I counted the rings.)

It's important to take time to notice things in life like this and consider them even if it is just to appreciate them for the moment and put things in perspective.

Enjoy some others, too:

Ladybug Invasion

2009-07-04T14:00:00.000-04:00

I'm sure we've all encountered lady bugs like this. You're outside somewhere near the woods or flowers and you spot a cute, little red ladybug walking around. Pick her up and let her walk on your hand for a minute just to say hello before putting her back on a leave or a flower.

Well I found on on the peak of the mountain I hiked to yesterday. And then I found some more. And some more. And I picked all of them up to say hello!

Hiking near Santa Fe

2009-07-04T13:00:00.000-04:00

Of the over four thousand pictures I've taken on my trip so far I find the most happiness looking at this one.

Whenever I look at mountains I look up at their peaks and think: I want to go there. Today I left my campsite in Hyde Memorial State Park and took a solo hike to the top of this nearby mountain. This is it: the peak. Someone from the forest service has put two picnic tables up here as a reward and I love them for it.

To my west I see another mountain, taller, almost reaching the clouds. To my east I see parts of Santa Fe and the valley that separates Santa Fe and Los Alamos. It's sunny and warm where I am but I can see storm clouds and rain off on the other side of the valley.

I think in life I enjoy balancing my time between being saturated with other people and being completely alone. It was nice to leave my campsite today where I have been "adopted" by a local Santa Fe family and go off for some "alone time."

The hike was hard because of the altitude. I had to stop every fifty to hundred feet just to catch my breath. But it was completely worth it.

Camping in Hyde Park near Santa Fe

2009-07-03T10:00:00.000-04:00

I'm now at this camp site in Hyde Memorial Park north-east of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

My mood changed in Clayton. When I first arrived the solitude let me concentrate on reading and thinking and I enjoyed it greatly. But when more people left the park and no one at all showed up to camp around me the solitude turned to loneliness and I needed to get on the road.

So after a couple hours taking a scenic route the Clayton park ranger had highlighted on a map, I arrived in Santa Fe. Clayton is a really small rural town -- a very nice one -- but I missed people and stores that I know. On the highway exit leading into Santa Fe I saw a sign for Whole Foods and my mood perked up a bit. After driving a couple miles into town I found a Trader Joe's on my right and turned in to take a break.

I sat in their parking lot using the internet on my phone to make a plan. I'd just left a nice state park that had a shelter, lake views and showers and the parks near Santa Fe didn't appear to offer any of that. I just wasn't in the mood to camp in an uncomfortable camp.. but I didn't have many options. With a clock on daylight ticking away, I decided to do a little shopping in Trader Joe's and then take a chance on Hyde Memorial Park which was just 20 minutes away from me.

Getting to Hyde Park from Trader Joe's took me through Santa Fe and gave me a glimpse at this new place. Almost every building here is done in an adobe-influenced style so residences, offices and even the McDonalds have an earthy, tan-brown adobe look to them. It takes some getting used to, I think.

Hyde Park is just outside of town on a windy two-lane road that goes rather high into the mountains. The campground is at seven or eight thousand feet up and when I arrive I feel the effects of less oxygen as I walk around.

While checking out a camp site I meet Annette from camp site #24 who suggests camp site #25 that you see above. To my surprise, it has a shelter -- a very unique one that protects from wind and cold on three sides and is made of wood. At first I think of putting the tent in the shelter but this seems odd so it's on a nice bed of pine needles under the trees.

After being in the open plains and the solitary desert of north-eastern New Mexico, being back in the mountains with their cooler, thin air and earthy aroma makes me feel much better. I've met Annette and her family next door at #24 so won't go crazy from being completely alone.

Clayton, NM Starry Night

2009-07-01T01:30:00.000-04:00

Tonight something woke me up at 1 am, I got out of the tent pitched in Clayton Lake State Park in north-east New Mexico and looked up.

Above me are about three times as many stars as I normally see on the east coast and a subtle band of the milky way is present, too.

I was too tired to fool with the camera much but I took a few shots of the canyon wall that rises above me and the lake. This is what night looks like away from the cities. I'm surprised the mid-westerners don't brag about this more: they should.

Rural Graffiti

2009-06-30T13:00:00.000-04:00

The road linking my campsite in Clayton Lake and the town of Clayton is approximately twelve miles of windy road between thousands of acres of grassy plains used by ranchers to raise cattle. Near the town the road winds through a canyon with large rocks on the sides. This is where the local kids come out to paint their flags and mark their colors.

Camping with the birds

2009-06-30T10:00:00.000-04:00

This is my campsite in Clayton Lake State Park in north-eastern New Mexico.

This place offers beautiful views and peaceful surroundings but also a few functional things I've wanted for a few weeks now.

In Florida I had to pitch the tent on rough gravel that is uncomfortable to say the least. Here I've got flat, clean, smooth cement for my tent base. A bed of pine needles on soft brown earth is ideal, but I'll take this over the Florida Experience of stones and white coral dust.

The sun's rays shine down on me here just as much as in Florida, but I have a steel shelter providing shade above me at all times. It's hot here, but its not humid at all: this is my first experience with "dry heat" and I'm loving it.

My particular shelter is home to a few birds that have made mud nests under the roof of the shelter. When I'm around they seem to be pretty afraid of me so they stay quiet and usually fly out and flee to somewhere else. But when I'm in my tent and they can't see me they sit in their nexts and chirp up a storm chatting to one another in an usual sounding style. It's like their sitting around the water cooler complaining about the new guy.

Camping in Rural Clayton, New Mexico

2009-06-29T21:00:00.000-04:00

I'm in north-eastern New Mexico near a town called Clayton driving as the GPS tells me towards a New Mexico state park where I can camp for the night. This part of the rural midwest is stunningly beautiful if you can appreciate the kind of beauty whose soundtrack is mostly that of silence interrupted only occasionally by birds chirping, the soft rustle of grass in the wind and a rusty, creaky windmill pumping water for the cattle at its base.

When I finally arrive, I find a sunken valley in otherwise flat, barren grazing land. The valley is the state park with narrow winding dirt roads surrounding a calm man-made lake in the middle of what seems like nowhere.

When I imagine what my next camp site is going to be, it is usually a variation of something I've seen before. "Camping lake" on a map suggests a basic lake with some pine trees around it on a gradual slope and some camp sites nearby the trees. This is nothing like that, nothing I could have imagined. The sun is going down so I've got a clock ticking but I take the time to drive around in search of the best spot. The one I end up choosing is on a terrace overlooking most of the lake, the fishing pier and other campsites below. This is a pleasant surprise.

Dodge City, Kansas

2009-06-29T12:00:00.008-04:00

There aren't many organized places like state parks to camp at in rural western Kansas so I drove the car to Dodge City, Kansas last night and found a no-frills independent motel. The Thunderbird is run by Indians from India with a lobby that smells like curry, rooms are $39 a night with free -- sporadic and unreliable -- Wifi internet access, and offer a mix of early 1960s and 1980s room styles and fashions. My room was the first room I've ever seen to offer three full size beds. I wish I had taken pictures of it as it was pretty hip in a weird, unusual and charmingly cute sort of way.

After I checked out of my room this morning I went exploring the town in search of the glorified cowboy town from western movies. Dodge City was once a thriving hub of commerce for the hundreds of thousands of cattle ranches that surround it. This was one of those towns where cowboys would ride in from the ranch to do business, eat and drink at the saloon and occasionally get into a gunfight.

A couple generations have past since those times and a lot of changes have happened. The old wooden buildings seen in every western movie were here but they pretty much burned down or were torn down and replaced by brick and mortar buildings. Styles changed and in the 50s, 60s and 70s many downtown buildings took on contemporary styles that were quite different from the western days. Globalization has been forcing changes on towns like Dodge City for about thirty years and its struggling to do well in modern times.

They've rebuilt part of the center of downtown here to look like it did back in the historic days. It's cute and tourists probably love it but I'm in search of the real thing. The difference between the Dodge City I had in my head and the Dodge City that's working hard to survive is a good opportunity for me to put my expectations in check for the rest of my trip. Between the rebuilt, attractive historic downtown of Dodge City and the tourist-oriented historic hotel that still stands there is a reminder of modern times: a very plain and boring 1990s style Applebee's restaurant. It's time to get outta Dodge.

The Mystery of an Abandoned Farm.

2009-06-29T12:00:00.007-04:00

First, consider the place I am going to show you is a tiny dot nestled amongst all of this:

Perhaps you're flying in a plane, looking down and you watch it for a moment wondering what it is. Then the stewardess asks you a question, you turn to answer her, and when you turn back, the place has passed by only to be forgotten.

If you were driving by it on in a car you might look out the window and see this view for a few seconds. Maybe you would notice something unusual about it and become curious.

If you stood in front of it, you'd notice it's not just a farm, but an abandoned farm.

If you're me, you go exploring...

I parked my car near the road where a driveway used to be. I make the following observations: The small building on the west is definitely not in use because the roof is falling down. But the main house doesn't look as bad: Could someone still be living here? Grass is growing over a foot high all over the property but the driveway leading to the farm has definitely had vehicles on it somewhat recently. There is an old red pickup truck on the edge of the property, some equipment in the back behind the houses, and three or four large pieces of oddly colourful farm machinery away from the houses to the east. What kind of place is this?

The red pickup truck is the farthest item to the western edge of the property so I check that out first.

This pickup hasn't been used in so long that rats or something similar were nesting in the cab. Bedding had fallen out of the cab when I opened the door and droppings were present all around. This is (approximately) a 1955 GMC pickup truck. It is 54 years old.

Behind the smaller house that I've skipped for now is another GMC pickup, this one on its side. This is back when trucks were simple: notice all the open space in the engine compartment? I love the huge mechanical horn in the lower left.

At abandoned remote places I see the chassis of cars and tricks on their side and upside down and always wonder who makes the effort to tip them over?

Near the back of the property are two fuel drums. I've got to assume that the fuel would be delivered periodically and these would allow the farmer to fuel up his truck and heavy farm equipment as needed. Don't smoke near the fuel tanks..

Another clue to the farm? Relatively recent oil containers just tossed in a pile. Was this the farm owner or someone using the land after the owner disappeared?

Two stationary engines for unknown uses. Pumps? Generators? Hard to tell.

A peak inside the barn.. The other views made it hard to photograph and hard to get near without getting into danger from snakes, rats.. or whatever else is around.

This hole in the ground lined with study bricks was either part of a well or a storm shelter or a little bit of both. It was located about 12 feet outside the backdoor of the main house.

Here is the back of the farmhouse... It's definitely abandoned. Want to go in? Sure you do!

The first room I enter is a little office area with a desk. As I pan to the left you'll see a door that goes to the bathroom.

You can see hot+cold water pipes through the wall where the bathroom would be.

The desk is pretty dirty. From the looks of -- everything -- its been a while since this house was inhabited. There was nothing in the drawers -- I checked.

Amazing! They left the television..

This is the central space heater that would have provided heat during cold, windy winters. I don't actually think I recall seeing a fireplace anywhere and this makes sense because there really aren't any trees in this part of the country to chop down for firewood. So you might as well skip that and plug in an electric furnace.

Here I realize that there was probably a sink in the middle and this was a kitchen area, too? Homes in America weren't that big for most people until relatively recently and farm houses were no exception.

I found this old catalogue on top of the television set.. The way the paper is torn suggests rats and mice have been tearing away at it for bedding. What catalogue is this and.. when is it from?

Montgomery Wards from 1976! In the days before Walmart people that lived in rural areas like this would get catalogues from Wards, J.C. Penney and Sears as one of their primary shopping methods. Order it by mail or phone and it would arrive in four to five weeks. Even in Maryland I remember paging through these catalogues when I was kid -- perhaps even this issue.

This is the small living room area..

Some pictures, like this one, will look a bit different because I've enabled the flash.

A solitary chair sits alone in the master bedroom. Imagine standing here in this very spot with a howling wind off in the distance on a cold night, a creaky windmill whistling from near the barn and an old wooden door on a rusty hinge creaking open and banging shut against the wood frame. What happens to you next ?

This is the front porch area where our farmer's family would have sat outside after dinner on warm summer nights watching the cars go by.

After I returned from photographing the porch I found a door in the corner of the living room that went upstairs...

Why is there so much stuff up here and less downstairs? One theory is that people -- like me -- who've explored the house after the owners left took things and missed the upstairs. Another theory would be that squatters might have lived upstairs while the windows and walls of the downstairs started to crumble.

When I explore a place like this I'm usually near a quick exit so if something spooks me I can quickly get out. But upstairs I started to feel a bit trapped, turned around to go back down and noticed just how filthy this place is.

This is a shot of the bathroom as seen from outside. The walls to the bathroom have collapsed and the sink, bathtub and other fixtures are gone.

This second small house sits to the west of the property. There was too much grass and greenery around it for me to get near the front porch and attempt to enter so I had to hold my camera up over my head and take blind shots through the widow.

Three pieces of farm machinery and this GMC truck sat alone in the field about 300 feet east of the house in a grassy field. When I passed by on the road the bright colors of the farm machinery made them look like they were still in use. I thought maybe the farm house is shut down but someone is still operating the farm? So I went to take a closer look..

This truck hasn't been operated in a very long time. The branches and grass were the nest of a bird. The bird, now dead, sits near the front edge of the passenger seat.

From the road this tractor looks like its in good condition. There isn't even that much grass growing around it. I climbed up and opened the unlocked door to take a peek inside.

This picture frame caught my attention. I can imagine a farmer spending hours slowly cultivating the field, occasionally looking down at a picture of his wife or family. I opened the frame to see what was in it but the paper was so old everything had faded to black and the paper disentegrated in my hands upon any light touch.

What happened here?

The property is a typical Oklahoma farm on a fairly large acreage of land. A small farm house, a smaller guest or farm hand house and a classic wooden barn still stand. When they were vacated they were probably in normal condition. It's time and the elements that have brought them to their current condition: there is no sign of a tornado ripping half the house apart and killing the residents, causing the farm to halt its operations.

The red GMC pickup truck on the west part of the property was probably old when the farmers left but keeping old trucks from this era running is something folks out here do well so it was probably still running or close to it. On the eastern part of the property three pieces of farm expensive farm machinery and a GMC truck sit as if they were each parked at the end of work one day and expected to be started up and used on the next.

Nothing about this farm looks like it was carefully shut down with the expectation that operations were going to be suspended or that the equipment was going to be moved or sold. In some ways, this farm just stopped one day.

The land around the farm appears to be cultivated today, at least for grass or wheat. But I don't know if this is official or if this could simply be a nearby farmer letting the grass grow so it could be made in to bails of hay and used for free.

There are too many questions with this place. Having visited it, touched it and experienced it in person the unanswered questions haunt me. If I get the chance in the future, I'll return and find the answers.

As Far as the Eye Can See...

2009-06-29T10:00:00.000-04:00

Today I felt a strange feeling while driving along the road observing everything around me. I was nowhere I could identify and yet I felt like I had arrived somewhere.

I had arrived in the prairie. The prairie of stories like "The Wizard of Oz."

I could describe to you a spot on the earth near the Eiffel tower in Paris, France and you could travel there, follow my directions and arrive at the exact spot. But the idea represented by a place like Dorothy's home in "The Wizard of Oz" is as much a state of mind as a place.

It's flat and open surrounded only by fields of wheat or grass. There is a single road that connects this place to the world and allows it to be marked on a map so that it is not wilderness. There are few people, few cars and few buildings.

There is a tremendous sense of relaxing solitude and peace here.

The feeling here has a permanence to it: You can stay here as long as you like for this feeling as opposed to the peak of a mountain where the same feelings are tempered with an awareness that soon you must leave and return to somewhere else.

The feeling here has a persistence to it. Hours later, the place and the feeling is the same. It's different from the same quiet solitary awareness you achieve on the peak of a mountain: You know that soon you will have to leave and return to somewhere else. Here, you can stay and the solitude welcomes you as long as you like.

I wonder what it would have been like to live here fifty years ago with no cellphone, no long distance, no cable or satellite TV: just you, your family, your crops and a single speaker radio pulling in the staticy broadcasts from far away.

Greenburg, Kansas: Midwestern Hurricane Katrina?

2009-06-29T08:00:00.000-04:00

I left Wichita yesterday and headed west on highway 55 going west. As the sun started to get lower, I pulled out the map and looked for camping spots marked with a little tent icon. I spotted one not to far away and set the GPS to take me there.

By coincidence, it took me straight to Greensburg, Kansas.

Greensburg was hit by an F5 tornado in 2007 that destroyed 95 percent of the city and killed eleven people. I'd only heard of it when my brother mentioned a television show on the Discovery Channel about how the town was attempting to rebuild as a "Green" town since then.

When the possible campsite in town turned out to be a no-go, I decided to drive around a bit and see what the town looked like. At first, I didn't see anything that looked too unusual. But after slowing down and paying attention to my surroundings I realized the devasation had been all around me: everything was gone but ghosts remained.

I found myself next to a patch of land that I assumed was just a big open lot with green grass and a few old trees growing on it. But when I looked closer I saw the cement driveways that used to connect the road with the driveways of houses. Houses that were completely gone except for either a flat cement foundation or a dug-out basement surrounded by cement walls.

The trees weren't just old, but a closer look showed they'd been ravaged by wind and rain. These few trees represented the few that were strong enough and lucky enough to survive the powerful tornado.

I had to drive a few streets over to see houses still standing with visible damage. Once my eyes trained to it I could imagine how the area must have looked immediately after the storm: trees knocked down, limbs and green leaves littering the roads, houses with roofs blown off, windows shattered and brick walls caving in.

Two years later many houses are either significantly repaired to the point where they look fine or replaced by brand new homes that look like any clean, suburban neighborhood. A few structures still remain without any repair work done, and some properties show only remnants of what once was standing there.

A major reconstruction effort is taking place along their main street. I spotted only one building that looked like it was there more than fifty years ago. A few buildings look have an extremely modern look that looks fairly out of place in a town otherwise simple, wholesome and humble.

Wikipedia's entry on Greensburg, Kansas

Liberal Air Museum

2009-06-28T18:00:00.000-04:00

Just like in 'nam, Tevas and all.

The Liberal Air Museum in Liberal, Kansas resides in an old military aircraft hanger just off one of the runways on the grounds of a World War II military base. In the 1940s servicemen were trained to fly the B-24 "Liberator" aircraft from this base. Today, the runway is still in use as Liberal's municipal airport and the military buildings that once supported troops have been converted to commercial business use like the museum.

Approximately ninety percent of the indoor space of the museum is taken up by aircraft of one sort or another. The remaining ten percent is a display of support equipment, historic photos, and material from the bases operational days in the 1940s. Outside the hanger on part of the runway approximately ten large aircraft are on display as well.

They've done a good job with the museum but I was hoping for more World War II planes that I could enter and photograph. I look back at those days and see their lack of sophistication and technology as simple times. But despite not having so much technological support the designers of aircraft fromm this period were able to provide the operators with a tremendous amount of complexity using only mechanical methods like buttons, dials and knobs connected to basic electrical circuts and pulleys. Today's "fly by wire" systems are much more complex and reinforces my nostalgia for the good old days.

One Man's Trash is...

2009-06-28T15:00:00.001-04:00

Spotted this in a little town on highway 55 west (somewhere!) of Wichita, Kansas.

Motor Fuel Carrier #5

2009-06-28T12:00:00.000-04:00

I see this kind of scene a lot in the midwest.

As I imagine it, it basically goes something like this: One day somebody parks a car or truck they own on a patch of land they own. There's a lot of land here and a culture rooted in maintaining and repairing old things after they've become old and out of fashion so nobody minds another old car or truck sitting in a field. They assume the owner's got a use for it or plans to restore it in the future and its not bothering anybody. An old truck like this just sits here and day by day the owner neglects to do anything with it. Years pass and the grass grows thick and tall around it and the other things that happened to be left nearby. Years later the entire area gets forgotten and nature starts to reclaim the things and the land. It's the old story of "dust to dust."

Blue Lights in Wichita

2009-06-27T21:00:00.000-04:00

Trying my hand at Lightning again, this time in the prarie. I've gotta do a little storm chasing sometime because open, flat space would be a great place to setup far away from a storm and get some good shots.

This is just west of Wichita, Kansas where I'm house sitting.

Steve, Amy and Eva's pad

2009-06-27T12:00:00.002-04:00

I'm house sitting at Steve and Amy's house in Wichita, Kansas.

Their house is open and spacious in a way that makes a pretty big house feel even bigger than it is, yet this is no over-priced, impress-the-neighbors McMansion of the east. It's a simple design that works really well and the way they've decorated and furnished it makes it feel like living in luxury. I've stayed here twice and each time I question why people pay so much more for so much less near one of the big coastal cities.

Steve and Amy's house sits on a big plot of land that isn't locked in with a clear start and finish but blends into their neighbors properties. The view from their impressive deck is one that combines lush green grass, a small flowing creek, a neighbor's manicured pond and a forest of trees off in the distance.

I've been traveling for a few weeks now and a chance to stop and slow down is exactly what I needed. My favorite time of this is sitting with the laptop on their deck at sunset. The air gets cooler, a lazy, steady midwestern prairie breeze sneaks up on you, and the sunset is amazing. I bet they used to it and forget how good it is, so I took some pictures to remind them.

The thumbnails are nice, but click on the pictures for the full size versions that do them justice.

Historic Guthrie, Oklahoma

2009-06-26T08:00:00.000-04:00

In the late 1800s and early 1900s America was in an age of growth and prosperity.

In 1899, ten thousand new settlers participated in a land rush that provided them with land for raising livestock and growing crops. Cities sprang up in order to provide these new settlers with opportunities to trade and purchase goods to support themselves.

The town of Guthrie, Oklahoma was once the capitol of the pre-statehood territory of Oklahoma. It thrived in those days with booming business for the new settlers and midwestern commerce. Investors employed skilled builders and craftsman to build buildings for the long run: brick and mortar buildings with ornate decorations designed to last for very long periods of time with class and style.

I enjoy seeing buildings from this period because of the human mindset they represent. When you see a building you see the people behind it. The people who created Guthrie had the same desire to make money and be rich as anyone else but they did it in a style that expected profits on a slower pace over a longer period of time. In today's market the Walmarts and Best Buys of our country don't have the ability to build long lasting, beautiful structures like these. They're focused on their financial results for the next quarter and how Wall Street will judge them. The question is not even as simple as whether you might favor a retailer in a restored historic building over one in a big box store because both retailers know there is a strong chance you'll skip the store altogether and shop online.

This period in America is seen today through the towns that still preserve their historic buildings from a hundred years ago. Many towns don't have the economy or appreciation to keep them in good shape. Guthrie, Oklahoma is making the effort and the atmosphere of their historic downtown is impressive.

You'll find Guthrie, Oklahoma by getting off the fast modern highway and taking route 77 north of Oklahoma City headed towards Wichita, Kansas. I only spent a few hours there but it was worth my time.

Guthrie, Oklahoma on Wikipedia

Fields of Gold in Rural Oklahoma

2009-06-25T19:00:00.001-04:00

This is the kind of shot you see in National Geographic yet for all my traveling around the midwest, I hadn't seen it much. Across the road from this patch of yellow daises is the thickest, greenest patch of cornstalks I've ever seen.

Click on the images for the full resolution, full color view.