I first discovered the ghost town of Aroya Colorado while spotting storms, but I was unable to explore due to a tornadic supercell bearing down on us, so I chalked this up to investigate the next time “I was in town”. I was again chasing but the storms were not firing, so I decided to stop by and check out this old ghost town. During my initial drive by I only noticed the school building from the road and I thought the town was a farmstead; I didn’t realize there was a abandoned townsite to explore!
Town of Aroya
Aroya Colorado was founded in 1866 by Joseph O. Dostal who was a Bohemian Immigrant (I had to look up Bohemia, which was a country about where modern Czech Republic is). Like everyone coming to Colorado in those days, his dream was to open a meat house in a mining community, but he ended up homesteading a ranch on the Colorado plains (which is still in operation today, two cowboys were on horse herding cattle when I stopped by). By the early 1900s the town was thriving including a train depot (this was a watering station for the Kansas-Pacific Railroad), blacksmith, feed store, lumber yard, hotel, school, bunk house and many homes.
The demise of the town occurred due to common changes impacting many homesteaded pioneer towns, the state highway bypassing town and the train company having better days.
William Smith’s General Merchantile, Aroya Colorado. This was on the corner of the county road and main street of town.
Home of Owen “Red” Moreland, sone of Ben Moreland who ran the gas station. This home was built on the foundation of the old Aroya hotel. Red was an artist and a statue he welded together is at the museum in nearby Kit Carson.
Ben Moreland’s Aroya filling station
Aroya’s second Schoolhouse, circa 1919
Aroya’s second Schoolhouse, 99 years old!
Television was likely hard to get in Aroya, or were these alien beacons?
Windmill turned Antenna
Aroya General Mercantile stuff
Aroya Main Street attraction…or detraction. An old doll hung out for the elements!
Aroya Main Street attraction…
Aroya abandoned home
Aroya abandoned home
Aroya outbuilding
Barbed Wire
Motor on fence post
Aroya’s portal, one of Colorado’s only portals into another dimension
Wyoming Solar Eclipse. August 21, 2017. We knew the crowds would be large, we knew the traffic would be bad, but we had to go anyway…it was just too close to miss. August 21st brought the total solar eclipse through the middle of Wyoming. My sister, dad and I decided to witness it first hand.
My family stayed with my folks that weekend, they live on the Colorado side of the Wyoming border up near Red Feather Lakes. The plan was for my sister to come up and meet my dad and I near the Wyoming border on 287. We’d carpool from there. The target was south of Casper on BLM land, staying clear of the I-25 corridor. There we’d be in the center of the shadow for the longest totality without the crowds.
We drove on Wyoming 487 and there was a good amount of traffic so we jumped off onto Wyoming 77 and was just looking for a nice spot with a good view. Just so happened we hit the Shirley Ridge which had an amazing 360 view, and only two other cars were there. We got there a couple of hours early.
Here was our target area. We jetted over to 77 once we realized the popularity of 487.
Since we were early, we set up our cameras and then I started wandering around looking at rocks. There were agates and jaspers laying everywhere! Cool. So a rock hound and celestial road trip together! Can’t beat that!
Agates and Jaspers were everywhere.
For the photography buffs out these, here was my setup. I had a Sony Alpha with 2x teleconverter and 70-200mm lens zoomed. That gives me 400mm, and then I used APS-C mode on the camera to give me another boost to 600mm. My dad had purchased a solar viewing film and I had that taped on the lens hood with painters tape to not leave residue. All of this was on a tripod which was a lot of weight, but luckily the mirrorless cameras are light in comparison and it didn’t get too windy so I felt we were safe.
The setup, my Sony Alpha (covered with a cloth to prevent overheating in the direct sun) with a solar filter taped to the hood. On the screen it shows a picture of the eclipse at about 75%.
My plan was to take pictures every 3 minutes both coming into and leaving the eclipse and then during totality I would remove the lens hood, refocus, and take shots at different settings to capture all the different features of the totality. All of this worked except one thing, I realized about half way into the waning of the eclipse that I was out of focus. I didn’t realize that my focal point was the film several inches off of the end of the lens (affixed to the lens hood). So I didn’t focus correctly getting many of the waning shots. Oh well, rookie mistake.
Taken from the Mr. Eclipse article on photographing eclipses, this is an amazing article that everyone interested should read!
Leading up to the totality the birds and crickets started to sing and make noise as if it was dusk. There were no trees so we didn’t see the kaleidoscopic effect that others saw which would have been amazing. It also got considerably cooler, fast, and the winds started to blow adding to the chill factor.
My dad Alex and sister Kristy chilling out as the Eclipse was starting. You can see all the people that got at this site after we did; but we were all very comfortably spaced out.
During totality it was a scramble, I was taking many shots with different settings per Mr. Eclipse‘s chart above and then I sat the camera down and just observed. What was cool was the 360 degree view we had, and the 360 degree color spanning the horizon!
During totality, looking NE towards Casper-ish. You can see the shadow of the moon in the clouds! That was really one of the coolest things about the eclipse is watching the shadow progress across the horizon.
Here is the sun at the start of the eclipse. You can see some spots.
Here is one of the last shots I took before removing the lens hood with the filter affixed. From the next several minutes I explored different settings and took a bunch of pictures. Focus was a bit of a challenge as infinity was blurry.
Here is a picture of the corona. Taken at f/8, 1/80 sec, ISO-100 at 600mm.
This was the last picture I took without the filter. f/8, 1/125 sec, ISO-100 @600mm.
Here is the “diamond ring” feature of the totality. I’m pretty satisfied how this one turned out!
Here were the chalk cliffs which was the only feature on the horizon that is on google maps.
The trip home wasn’t too bad, although there was about an hour backup on 487 because of the stop sign in Medicine Bow at US 287. But the state troopers had that engineered well and traffic slowly flowed through and no-one had to completely stop.
You can see the line of cars, looks like ants, on the horizon. This was no where near as bad as I-25 was. Good choice to my sister and dad on this route!
We found this little horny toad lizard wondering around.
My dad gave me my grandfathers coin bag–all the coins he collected while touring in the United States Air Force before he retired. There are some amazing coins in there, so I decided to take some photos. I love the designs on these coins!
As always, click on any image for a much larger HD version, and note all the video is HD so adjust your settings. The crystals of Gem-O-Rama 2016 are in this separate blog post.
My prospecting buddy Kirk suggested we road trip to Gem-O-Rama this year for its 75th anniversary. I have always wanted to make that event, but for the last several years have not wanted to hassle with coordinating a trip. Having someone to go with was a game-changer for me, and I was able to take off of work and home life to make this happen.
We decided that camping would be fun and definitely the cheapest route, so we packed up our stuff knowing the days would be warm in the desert and nights would likely be cold. We also packed up appropriate prospecting equipment.
Here is the first leg of the trip. California or Bust !!!
We started off the trip with Colorado’s first snow. As luck would have it, the snow was most intense when we planned to leave, and the drive was a bit dicey until the sun came up! Our goal was to make it to Valley of the Gods in SW Utah (the actual destination was kept secret…little did I know that Kirk had spent quite a bit of time in the SW and had some amazing routes for us on the road trip!)
Roads were very slick west of Denver all the way through South Park. Kenosha Pass was re-opened as we were embarking…we saw why!
After leaving South Park the roads cleared up and we had a pleasant drive. Kirk had made the longest playlist of cool tunes I think I’ve ever heard; I don’t know if it ever repeated. We discovered we have many similar interests in synth-based music and I met my match when it comes to 80’s band trivia!
One has to be careful when traveling this area of the country–we narrowly escaped this attack!
The aspen were almost done and the oaks were starting to turn.
Valley of the Gods
I love this part of our country! I had not been to Valley of the Gods, likely because I don’t frequent German travel websites (this must be a popular place for Germans to tour the US because we met a lot of German tourists in this area). The beauty of the SW Utah desert is world famous!
Two episodes of the BBS program Dr. Who were filmed in Valley of the Gods. You never know when Daleks would be around the bend…
Moki Dugway
It was getting late in the afternoon and I figured we must be staying in this general area. Kirk told me to find Moki Dugway on the map, I said whaaat? But eventually I found it on the map as we traversed Moki Dugway, a hidden road along a cliff wall onto the top of the mesa. Moki Dugway led to a mesa that jets out over the San Juan River and overlooks Valley of the Gods and Monument Valley. It is one heck of a gorgeous place to camp, that’s for sure!
This is the view from our campsite at the end of the road that Moki Dugway dropped us on. This is looking east back towards Colorado over Valley of the Gods.
The sunset was beautifully colored as there was a fire burning west of us. It was obvious were were under a major flight corridor as we saw planes throughout the evening and night!
Our view of Monument Valley to the South, with the smoke plume from the forest fire to our west.
The camp on the top of a cliff! It got quite chilly up there that evening!
Monument Valley, with the start of the smoke plume from the forest fire to our west, from Moki Dugway.
The sky was clear and the stars were awesome. We saw several shooting stars but no satellites, which we both thought was pretty strange given how clear and dark the night’s sky was!
I did catch a Moki Dugway shooting star (and airplane)!
Kirk enjoying breakfast on Friday morning!
Looks like we camped at Eva’s Point, so said the sign affixed to this old tree. I wonder who Eva was and how many times she posted her favorite spots in the desert southwest?
Day #2’s Leg
We woke up, got a bite to eat and then headed out. We stopped at Goosenecks State Park which Kirk stated the last time he was there it was not a State Park. We parked and took in the amazing bends of the San Juan River.
After that we went through Monument Valley and continued through Page, AZ where the Glen Canyon Dam for Lake Powell was located.
Page Arizona power plant
Zion National Park
Zion is an amazing place, and the word is out. In 2015 it was the 6th most visited National Park. We were a little behind in our itinerary so we didn’t have much time to stop but the views and geology as we drove through were awesome!
We continued through the barren landscapes and went through Las Vegas on Friday afternoon at sunset, which is rush hour. Note to self, take the newly built bypass on the north side on the way home! South of Vegas heading toward Los Angeles we witnessed a solid line of cars heading the other way into the City of Sin! Not being a huge fan of Las Vegas, I’d have to admin this was my second best trip there; we went straight through without stopping! (the best was on the way home when we took the bypass loop and didn’t go through it at all, lol)!
Trona Pinnacles
This was our view from camp at Trona Pinnacles.
Our destination was Trona Pinnacles in the Searles Valley, where we’d camp for two nights while we were picking crystals at Gem-O-Rama during the day. We got to Trona Pinnacles after dark and the moon was setting as we found a place to camp. Trona’s landscape consists of around 500 tufa (calcium carbinate) spires making it look like an alien landscape. Actually, it was just that in the movie Star Trek V: The Final Frontier among many other hollywood blockbusters!
These tufa features were created long ago (10 to 100 thousand years ago) when calcium carbonate groundwater seeped into the bottom of large inland lakes that were present at that time. The calcium rich groundwater and the alkaline lake water created these deposits, the lakes drained, and we’re left with the Trona Pinnacles.
Looking east from camp at some of the pinnacles at the crack of dawn.
Looking at camp from the base of the pinnacles near us.
On the top of the pinnacles during pre-dawn looking north towards Trona and the Searles Valley Mineral plants.
Camp from the top of the pinnacles.
Campers on the other side of the pinnacles from us.
Here is a cool time lapse I did from the front door of the tent looking west. This was a 4+ hour capture using my 14mm f2.8 lens with 330+ open exposure shots.
The 75th Annual Gem-O-Rama 2016
Wow, what an amazing event. I have detailed this event is a separate blog post. I will say that the crystal digging was very simple and easy, and the Searles Lake Gem & Mineral Society put on one heck of an extravaganza! It’s nice for a change being able to drive right to the spot and pick crystals with minimal effort! It was extremely well organized and very family friendly. Here is the flyer for 2017, you should think about going!
One of the Brine Lakes mined by the Searles Valley Mineral Plant.
The return trip home
We finished with the halite collecting field trip on Sunday around noon and headed home. On the way we visited the ghost town of Rhyolite as we traversed through the 99 degree Death Valley (remember we started our trip at 29 degrees). We stayed in Mesquite in a stinky motel and progressed through central Utah meeting up with I-70 which from there was a straight shot home.
Rhyolite, Nevada
Gold was discovered in 1904 in the hills around Rhyolite, and in 1905 the town was formally established and platted. As many of the gold rush towns of western America, the town was in a boom mode and growth was swift. Just several years into the boom of the town, however, several economic events including the San Francisco earthquake squelched the investment in Rhyolite’s mines. By 1908 Rhyolite’s population was peaking at around 8,000, but the mines were beginning to fail due to lack of investment or lack of production. By 1910, residents moved as more and more financial hardship hit the town. By 1919, the Post Office was closed.
What amazes me if that in 15 years the town went from nothing, to nearly 10,000 residents, back to nothing. Much of the infrastructure of the town was moved to the nearby town of Beatty, so at least resources were re-purposed. Today Rhyolite is a interesting town of ruins, with the train depot currently being restored.
Tom Kelly built his bottle house in 1906 and then raffled it off. Note that the bottles do not show inside the house; the only light is from the traditional windows.
Recycling bottles did exist!
One of the iron doors of the jail house built in 1907.
The Porter Brothers’ store was erected in 1906. They sold everything from food to automobiles!
Cook Bank. Built in 1908 for $90,000. It was the tallest building in town, 3 stories plus basement. The vaults were in the center and the 2nd and 3rd floors were business offices.
This building was state of the art having steam heating, electric lights and marble floors.
Porter Brothers’ building, with dust trail from approaching vehicle!
The Las Vegas & Tonopah Depot, erected in 1909.
Sign advertising Rhyolite station, with “Rhyolite Ghost Casino” painted on top.
Looking into the front of the Jail
The irony here is terribly funny. This is “The Dream” resort in Beatty, NV. They must have run out of funding after they got the sign up, because the sign is all that exists of this resort.
Sunset on Sunday night in the middle of nowhere!
Sunrise in Mesquite
Some of the landscape as we progressed through Utah.
We love visiting Rifle Falls State Park in western Colorado, this is the fourth time we’ve stayed there. Rifle Falls SP is north of Rifle and New Castle which are Interstate 70 towns, and is about 25 miles NW of Glenwood Springs Colorado. It is a small park and is co-managed with Rifle Gap State Park several miles to the west. There are tent camping sites along the small creek with a good amount of privacy. Pull-in sites have electricity and will accommodate pop-ups to motor homes. There is potable water available at several taps in the campsites. There are a couple of non-flush bathrooms making those early morning trips convenient.
Beyond the campsites is parking and picnic areas at the main attraction, the three waterfalls. Over the weekend the park was heavily visited, so we hung out at the very well shaded tent campsites with our chairs and feet in the creek, occasionally taking plunges in the pools of cold, refreshing Colorado stream. In the evenings we hung out in the luxury of our friends pop-up camper and had a great campfire.
There are hikes around the tent sites, a loop around the falls, and a loop to the neighboring fish hatchery. There are many caves along the falls loop where you can go inside and enjoy some darkness. Nighttime boasts dark skies in the canyon. Overall a fun multi-family camping experience!
It has been a busy summer so far, lots of family activities and work projects have called for long hours. On the fourth of July we headed to my folks house near Red Feather Lakes Colorado for some needed R&R; and for my daughter and mom to finish a 4-H project, her very ambitious quilt! I took the camera and was able to catch timelapse video and some interesting pictures. The video is forthcoming, but here are some of my favorite stills. As always, images can be clicked for a larger perspective!
Their house had three outside lights and each day there were a variety of moths hanging out on the side of the house. I’ve never seen thing large of a variety in one spot before.
Signoid Prominent Moth (Clostera albosigma)
Big Poplar Sphinx Moth (Pachysphinx modesta)
Big Poplar Sphinx Moth (Pachysphinx modesta)
St. Lawrence Tiger Moth (Platarctia parthenos)
Fly on Columbine. Colorado’s state flower and state pest! 🙂
Morning Glory Plume moth (Emmelina monodactyla)
Morning Glory Plume moth (Emmelina monodactyla)
St. Lawrence Tiger Moth (Platarctia parthenos)
Boogie and the Big Poplar Sphinx Moth
St. Lawrence Tiger Moth (Platarctia parthenos)
One-eyed Sphinx Moth (Smerinthus cerisyi)
Green Fly
Small-eyed Sphinx Moth (Paonias myops)
Angulose Prominent Moth
White Furcula Moth (Furcula borealis)
One-eyed Sphinx Moth (Smerinthus cerisyi)
Didn’t rain too much, but this storm put off a great rainbow!
Tooks some photos of the quilting process. Many will go on Daphne’s presentation and in her record book.
Daphne’s first quilt on Grandma’s quilting machine
Mom’s Pin cushion
Mom’s fabric all sorted
My son, my dad, and I took a drive up to Deadman Fire Watch Tower / lookout.
Deadman fire watch tower
Rawah Wilderness from Dead Man fire watch tower
Crystal Lakes and Northern Colorado Front Range from Deadman fire watch tower
Deadman fire watch tower
Old Deadman wooden tower base
Lush green floor in the forest
Interesting forest panorama
Larimer County meadow looking at the Rawah Wilderness
This was the leg we all were waiting for, Yellowstone. Erin had planned this over a year in advance and it was really cool! We entered from the NE from Billings through Red Lodge Montana. We then dropped down into the Lamar Valley and ended up for the first 3 days in North Yellowstone at Tower / Roosevelt Cabins. The cabins were roomy with 3 beds and a wood stove. We didn’t end up needing the stove as it was very warm.
Looking NW from the switchback as the road angled up to the summit!
Awesome canyon as we entered from Red Lodge Montana
The road was narrow and speed limits were slow, which was worth it due to the amazing views
Cool tundra-scape
Beartooth Pass Summit
Amazing view atop Beartooth Pass
Moonscape atop Beartooth Pass
Looking south into Yellowstone from the summit of Beartooth Pass
Mountain Goat taking in the amazing view
Beartooth Pass Goat looking at the stunning view; what you don’t see is the deep canyon after the foreground
Racecar on top of the world
Beartooth Pass Goat
Beartooth Pass mountain goat. He had a collar.
Beartooth Pass amazing view
Wild flowers in bloom on the Beartooth Pass summit
The second day we left after exploring Keystone and Sturgis South Dakota on our way to Buffalo to spend the night. Along the way was also Devil’s Tower. I’ve always wanted to visit Devil’s Tower and was expecting it to be huge. It wasn’t as big as I thought it would be (I guess the mashed potatoes were to-scale…LOL), but it was very impressive.
Devils Tower as seen from the NE coming the back way from Aladdin
Devils Tower from the South on the trail
Devils Tower from the west
Devils Tower from the road entering the natural monument
The next day we headed up to Crow Agency Montana to see the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Erin really wanted to see this and I’m glad we went. The kids enjoyed the Battlefield and the stories of the volunteers there, it was finally cool to know the story when you can visualize what occurred.
Erin really wanted to go the Reenactment and it just so happened it was occurring the day we were there (she is great at planning!). I was afraid it was going to be really cheesy but I actually enjoyed it. Luckily there was a breeze (to our backs, fortunately) all day which kept my horse allergies at bay. I especially liked the narrative which was poetic and told as stories and legend! There were a ton of horses and people too; and the Crow were riding the horses bareback, many got thrown in front of us and they got up and shook it off. Yikes!
Little Bighorn Reenactment 2015
Cool herd of “wild ponies”
The next leg of the trip was the headliner, Yellowstone. We entered from the NE corner through Red Lodge Montana.
This summer we did the “Road Trip Vacation” with the kids in our new car. Now that the kids are old enough to remember we visited many of our national treasures. We started off by visiting the Oregon Trail Ruts National Historic Landmark in Guernsey, Wyoming. This is a neat little site that is amazing to see how the metal wheels of the wagons cut down into the sandstone. Many many families looked for a new life homesteading the “wild west” in the 1800’s.
Oregon Trail Ruts State Historic Site
Cool old tree with me and the kids.
Oregon Trail Ruts
Cool old tree at Oregon Trail Ruts
Our destination for the first night was Keystone South Dakota to see both rock art features, Crazy Horse Memorial Monument and Mount Rushmore!
Gate at Crazy Horse Memorial plus Daphne howling at the moon
Crazy Horse Monument
Crazy Horse Monument
Henry Little Soldier by David Humphreys Miller
Woody Crumble’s Spirit Horse
Down the road from Crazy Horse was Mount Rushmore. We ended up there after dinner time and it was sprinkling and overcast. Made for a really neat view with some awesome lightning overhead for a little while! Saw these very tiny Mountain Goats on the way into the park as a bonus!
Mini Mountain Goat baby at Mount Rushmore
Mount Rushmore Mountain Goats
Rushmore baby mountain goat
Mini Mountain Goat family at Mount Rushmore
Mount Rushmore lightning
Washington’s Looking at You
Mount Rushmore Turkey Vultures
Mount Rushmore lightning
Keystone South Dakota was a cool little town with a quaint downtown with 2 rock shops. Only one was open, however. There was an amazing antique / thrift shop with a bunch of unique stuff and a friendly shop keeper, and an interesting sign downtown…
Surgeon supplies documented on a sign in downtown Keystone, SD
Awesome fence at the closed rock shop.
The next day we headed to Sturgeon for lunch and then to Devil’s Tower and eventually to Buffalo to stay the night…see the next post for more about the second leg of 4 of our adventure!
We had a wonderful road trip this summer going through South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana and Colorado. 2100 miles over about 9 days. We were able to see many different animals and babies. This is a summary of the trip’s animal shots.
Young Black Bear
Salmon Fly that all the fish loved on the Yellowstone River
Baby miniature Mountain Goat at Mt Rushmore
(Miniature) Mountain Goat Family at Mt Rushmore
Baby Mountain Goat at Mt Rushmore
Baby Mountain Goat and dad at Mt Rushmore
Baby Mountain Goat at Mt Rushmore
Mountain Goat on Beartooth Pass summit
Mountain Goat on Beartooth Pass summit, it was quite spectacular view
Grizzly Bear in Yellowstone, check out the claws!
Pelicans and ducks on Yellowstone River
After returning, we discovered this baby deer in our driveway.
A little afternoon ciesta for this elk. Mammoth Hot Springs visitor center.
Cute baby elk and male Brown-Headed Cowbird.
The old raven in Yellowstone, he was huge
American Avocet shorebird in the Yellowstone sunset warming up their feet in the thermal pool
Turkey Vultures at Mt Rushmore
Coyote chilling in the grass.
Coyote along the drive in Yellowstone
Our first bison we saw, in the Lamar Valley heading in from the NE entrance
