Hello Everyone!
Greetings from Gardnerville, Nevada! I have popped out of California for a few minutes on my way through the Carson Valley and am overjoyed to see gas prices that start with a 3 instead of a 4 or 5 which is the hardest part about traveling in California. It’s a bit gloomy out today and the temperature is hovering just above freezing, so it’s a perfect day to hunker down and get this post written. It’s been a wonderful week out here on the road, slowly making my way up California 395 on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I’ve driven this road dozens of times between Yosemite and Las Vegas or Death Valley, but I have usually had to make it all the way between the two in a day which doesn’t leave much time for exploring. Being able to stop off and see the sights and do some hiking and take my time is what this trip is all about and I’ve definitely enjoyed doing just that this week. In the beginning of the week, it was pretty hot out during the day, but the nights were cool and pleasant and seeing snowy mountains out my driver’s side window was been amazing. Towards the end of the week I made my way into those mountains and even saw some snow.
I left you last week in Ridgecrest, a nice little military support community near the China Lake Naval Weapons Center. After I finished this post, I ran across the street to the little Maturango Museum which had a small but wonderful collection of local artifacts. They highlighted the plentiful petroglyphs (ancient rock carvings) in the area as well as the natural history of the local desert environment. The museum had some wonderful photos on display, both recent ones from a National Geographic bird photography competition and some great old ones from the area which had been taken by naval photographers practicing for their official duties in the local community. Perhaps best of all, the museum also served as the local visitor’s center and the ladies there gave me some wonderful ideas for my trip north. When they closed up for the day I went across the street to a very nice park where I cooked up some dinner and read my book before calling it an early night.
Wednesday morning I was up and off nice and early and made my first stop at Fossil Falls. This small recreational site is in the shadow of an ancient cinder cone and there is plentiful evidence of the area’s volcanic past. During the last ice age, the snowmelt fed into a river and that river ran over Fossil Falls. There hasn’t been any water there in a very long time, but you can still see where the water flowed over the rock on its downhill trajectory. From Fossil Falls I headed on to Lone Pine and stopped in at the Museum of Western Film History on the edge of town. The nearby Alabama Hills have served as the setting for over a hundred movies in the last hundred years, with their wonderfully textured western landscape and the backdrop of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. While most of these films were made before my time, names like The Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy were certainly familiar to me. In more modern times Tremors and Django Unchained were filmed in the area…
Shhh. This is one of the towns nobody wants me to tell you about. Red River is a stunning little ski town along the Enchanted Circle in Northern New Mexico. It looks a lot like a Colorado ski town, but smaller, quainter, cheaper and with that special New Mexico sense of enchantment. I was there on a beautiful spring morning when the sun was shining but the air was cool and crisp. Despite plenty of snow on the mountain, it was sadly closed for the season.
Native Americans have hunted up and down the Red River for centuries, but the town’s beginnings were as a mining camp in the late 19th century when gold, silver and copper were being pulled from the hills. The town boomed to a population of around 3000 by the turn of the century, and as the mineral deposits started to dwindle, Red River gained a reputation as a cool weather getaway and a trout fishing paradise.
Red River today has a year-round population of just around 500, but it will multiply many times over on winter weekends when the town is buzzing with vacationers. No matter where you are staying in town, you could probably walk to the slopes with the lifts taking off from right in the center of town. In the warmer months, the area is full of trails and fishing is still a major draw and the the high elevation makes it cooler than towns to the south, east and west. I loved my short stay in Red River and it is one of the towns that I will definitely be returning to in the future. I hope you enjoy these photos from Red River, New Mexico’s classic ski town.
Our National Parks are our greatest treasure here in the United States. They are magical places which thankfully our forefathers had the foresight to set aside in perpetuity for their children and our children and their children. They preserve some of our most amazing landscapes and ecosystems and protect all manner of flora and fauna. From the Everglades in Florida to Denali in Alaska, even the names call forth wildness in our imaginations. Have no doubt, these are our lands, and if we want to keep them that way, we need to protect them. But most of all, we need to enjoy them. This is the second post in a series I have titled In Focus, which will take a look deeper into our National Parks. These are primarily photography posts, trying to show you the beauty of our parks and take you inside of them with me. My hope is that you will get out and see them for yourself. After all, they belong to you too.
Most people have probably never heard of Intheoaks, the magnificent one-time home of incandescent lighting pioneer Franklin Terry and his second wife Lillian. Frank and Lillian would probably be happy about that. This wonderful 24,000 square foot home hidden, quite literally, in the oaks of Black Mountain, North Carolina was never meant to be boastful or showy, it was meant to be lived in and enjoyed. Even people in Black Mountain, the town where it is located, seemed to have no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned it. I had never heard of it myself until a friend of mine tipped me off to check it out. I'm really glad he did. Visiting Intheoaks (yes, that is how it's spelled) was truly one of the highlights of my entire month in North Carolina...
When I set off on this journey, it was with a certain mental picture in my head. I hoped to find off-the-beaten-track places, meet local characters, listen to some great music and find some delicious local foods. Never would I have guessed that I could find all of those things in one place at one time, but that's exactly what happened when I walked in the door of Priddy's General Store outside of Danbury, North Carolina.
I had found Priddy's on a really great website for the North Carolina Blue Ridge Music Trail, but I didn't know what to expect as I drove down Sheppard Mill Road out of Danbury. About two miles out of town, an old white wooden store came into view. The lights were on and there were fires burning outside and I knew this must be the place. As I walked from my van through the cold winter night, the smell of something good cooking and the sounds of sweet bluegrass filled the air. It made me smile before I even walked in the door...
