Harkless Flat

Continuing south and east, we popped into the Inyo National Forest to check out Harkless Flat. I can’t recommend the road in for RV people. In fact, please don’t try it. There’s no cell service (until you reach the end of the road) so you can’t call for help when you get stuck or tear the bottom out of your rig. I would never bring my MH in here, and I brought my MH all sorts of places I had no business going, which is why it is such a dilapidated mess. This is pickup country. Even I touched bottom three times on the way to this campsite, which was a fabulous one. I bottomed out because of my blankety-blank trike rack, which is way too low to the ground. I will have to get the welding shop to rebuild the rack to reduce these problems which are seriously cramping my style. Very irksome.

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View from our campsite. We’re looking across the Owens Valley toward the eastern Sierra. The body of water is the intake for the LA city water supply. You may be aware that LA pretty much owns the entire Owens River, and in fact, consumes the entire Owens River. There isn’t much Owens River left once you get south of Owens Lake because LA drinks it all.

Walking down (and I do mean DOWN) from our campsite, you encounter this mine, which I think, by consulting the Forest Service map, is probably the Blake mine. I have no clue what Mr. Blake might have been mining here…could have been gold, but there are other possibilities as well. There was a ruined cabin a few hundred feet from our campsite, and then this mine about half a mile away. How Mr. Blake got his ore from this mine up to the “road” is a total mystery. That is the way it is with these old mines…the miners were obviously much hardier and WAY more determined than modern people. It was hard to get myself to this mine and back, much less a ton of rocks. This weird wheelbarrow-cum-ore-cart wouldn’t have fit on the path, even if it didn’t weigh a hundred pounds (empty). Note that the path is visible in this photo. You are looking at the path. So that’s how great a path it is. It seems more likely that Mr. Blake used his ore cart (before most of its wheels went missing) to haul ore out of the mine. Maybe he had a hapless animal of some kind to actually get the ore to the “road”, and a team of hapless animals to get the ore down the “road” to the REAL road several miles away. The mine had to have been a more-or-less successful concern because there was a cabin. Lots of mines didn’t even get that far.

Blake Mine

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Another view of the LA water intake, this time on the way to the Blake Mine. Just because the clouds are nice.

Tungsten Hills

I actually made two stops on the way to the Tungsten Hills but took, no photos. The first was a brief overnighter at Crane Falls on the Snake. Acceptable but nothing to write home about. I probably wouldn’t bother to go back there.

The second was at Spencer Hot Springs in Nevada, where I was hoping for several restful days. Unfortunately, right on my heels was an arctic front bringing 10 degree temperatures. I have camped in 10 degree temperatures. In fact, I have camped in 0 degree temperatures, but the experience was not pleasant enough so I cared to repeat it, so I fled south, winding up in the Tungsten Hills near Bishop, CA.

There was a sweet little creek a few feet from our campsite. This creek occupies what used to be a roadbed an unknown number of years ago, and about a zillion people drove down this road to where it dead ends in the creek, apparently thinking the road still continues into the Tungsten Hills. There is no turnaround at the dead end, so everyone used our campsite to turn around. Well, that is reasonable. They have to turn around, after all, but it got very wearisome after several days, particularly over the weekend when a few of these folks appeared at night, long after I would be driving down roads I was unfamiliar with, having to back out of dead ends between giant boulders in the dark. The first couple of times it happened, I felt pretty sorry for them. It was a bad spot to navigate in the dark going backwards. After that, it just got annoying.

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Here’s the end of the road a few feet from our campsite. Apparently you used to be able to drive across this creek, around the giant boulder in the center of the picture and then on into the hills. Not so much any more.

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Here’s the Sierra from our campsite

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And here’s the Sierra at sunrise, also from our campsite. This is off of Buttermilk Road, for those who are actually driving around looking for this campsite.

What else? The Snake River.

And now for something completely different: the Snake River. Oh, right. Now for something completely the same: the Snake River.

This time we are at Swan Falls (which is actually a dam, not a falls) near Boise in the Snake River Birds of Prey National Wildlife Management Area. The SRBOPNWMA is mostly not-very-scenic desert. I have camped there numerous times but never taken a single picture because there is basically nothing to photograph except military vehicles conducting training exercises on dusty roads going nowhere. You probably aren’t supposed to photograph them anyway. I didn’t want to get my camera confiscated. This actually almost happened to me once when I was taking pictures of birds flying around outside one of the gates of the Pentagon a number of years ago. They didn’t take my camera, but they went through my photos and made me delete all the ones taken near the Pentagon, even though they were looking away from the Pentagon at large birds in the air. I didn’t have any interest in photographing the Pentagon, but they take no chances at the Pentagon. Just in case a reflection of the Pentagon might show up in the photo, I guess, they made me delete the photos. Perhaps one of the birds might be carrying a dental mirror? Not being an expert, the sky and birds looked no different to me than skies and birds at many other locations nowhere near the Pentagon, but that might just be my ignorance talking. Besides, if the skies and birds all look the same, why do I need to photograph them outside the Pentagon? Good question. They just happened to be there, and I just happened to be there, so I leaped at the opportunity.

Anyway, I’m wandering off the point. The point is that Swan Falls is by far the nicest camping spot I have ever seen at SRBOPNWMA, and I highly recommend it. There were no military vehicles, but many boaters and campers. On the downside, there were also plenty of biting flies, which really sucked. It was hot and I wanted to sit outside, but I don’t like biting flies.

By the dam, which you must pass on the way to these campsites, there is a lovely park (do not ride your bike on the lawn…I was busted for this) with lots of interesting historical information about the dam, which was built in 1901.

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View up the Snake from Swan Falls campsite

Giant Cloud of Brown Glop Over Hells Canyon

Further along the Snake River we come to Hat Point in the Hells Canyon National Recreation
Area. I have been wanting to see Hells Canyon for years, and in fact, tried to see it a few years ago to no avail. I stopped at a “viewpoint” back then and took pictures of…nothing, really. Not a glimpse of the river could be seen, although a helpful informational sign assured me that the river was there, 6000 feet down in the canyon whose bottom was invisible from the viewpoint. 

So, this year I armed myself with a completely new rig. This enabled me to get up the road to Hat Point, and to camp once I had gotten there. As you can see, it was very smoky there. But there, totally, completely, gloriously visible, is….THE ACTUAL SNAKE RIVER, ACTUALLY RUNNING THROUGH HELLS CANYON!!!! 8000 feet below Hat Point, I finally saw Hells Canyon. OK, it looks the way the smoggy LA skyline did in the 1960’s, but there it is. I threw a party to celebrate. Everyone on the guest list (which included me and my cat) attended, and everyone was very impressed with Hells Canyon. 

It’s there! The river! Despite the brown glop, you can still see the river!

The party was held in this venue, which we got for the reasonable price of $0:

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The nano-house, which I also call The Tortoise

Although not invited, these citizens of Hat Point loomed over the party, casting a damper over everyone’s spirits. Is it just me, or do they look……….joyless? Being a tree must be tough at Hat Point.

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On the way down from Hat Point the next day, we took a brief respite from plummeting down the 16% grade (with scary drop-offs, one lane and no pullouts) to see another, less smoky view of Hells Canyon.

For all of you intrepid travelers out there who also yearn to see Hells Canyon, let me emphasize that I cannot recommend that anyone in a rig bigger than a pickup truck drive the road to Hat Point. Once the top of the 7-mile, 16% grade is reached, the road is good, but the grade is NOT FOR RV’s.

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Once again, no river to speak of, but at least the glop has cleared a bit.

Cottonwood Pass

We crossed this pass going from Crested Butte to Leadville, and, unlike a lot of the passes through the Colorado Rockies, it’s actually paved all the way. It’s over 12,000 feet (it could’ve been 12,500, I forget), so of course the view is amazing. There is a trail taking off from the parking lot that goes 1/4 of a mile to a viewpoint. I walked this trail, and the length of time it took was unbelievable. Nobody on a mountain bike passed me this time. Everyone else’s eyes were bugging out and chests were heaving just like mine. What would have been a few minutes’ romp at 4,000 or 5,000 feet was a major hike at 12 or 12.5. It was worth it, though. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, but I would put on my boots and braces next time. I figured that would be a waste of effort for 1/4 of a mile, but I was wrong about that.

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Tarn up near the pass

After a brief summer in Idaho, back on the road in Riparia, Washington

Oh look. Trees. Aren’t they nice. Perhaps you are wondering: “Why are you taking pictures of trees, as if they were in some way remarkable?” Well, they kind of are remarkable when you compare them to the miles and miles of desolation that surrounds them. They are no doubt what gives ‘Riparia’ its name. Below the lovely trees there is a view from Riparia across the Snake River. It shows what everything else around Riparia looks like. So Riparia is like a little slice of heaven in the middle of a giant wasteland. I guess it wasn’t a large enough slice of heaven to keep anyone there, as the actual town of Riparia is a ghost town.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the desert. I expend a lot of time, money and effort to travel in the desert every year because I really love it. But there’s something about a lush, riparian landscape in the middle of the desert that you can’t help rejoicing over.

I spent a brief and hellish summer in northern Idaho building a new place to live. It was hellish because it was over 100 degrees (doesn't happen in northern Idaho) and we were choking on smoke from numerous forest fires. The smoke was so bad I couldn’t see across my property sometimes. And these conditions lasted for weeks. They did not relent until it started to rain, and that was when I threw in the towel and departed. Rain makes a nice sound on the roof, but I can’t stand dark, gloomy days. I just want to go to sleep until the sun comes out again. Thankfully, I finished my building project just in time to leave town when the rain started, and I now have a brand, spanking new rig. Gone is the 35 foot motorhome, and I now have a nano-house in the back of a pickup truck that’s about 6.5 x 5.5 feet. Nice and maneuverable. AND it has 4WD. So I’m off for the wide open spaces.

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There they are: miles of brown hills. That’s what half the states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho look like.

Crested Butte

So this is one of my new favorite places on earth: Crested Butte, CO. My brother did his doctoral research near here; that’s how I heard of it. We camped on the banks of a lovely creek…could it have been Lead Creek? That doesn’t sound very lovely. Maybe it was Cement Creek. Anyway, it was much lovelier than its name suggests.

I hiked up out of the valley to see what I could see. The trail was punishing, and even though I’d been riding my trike a great deal (I put at least 300 miles on it over the winter), I could barely stagger up the trail. Perhaps the fact that we were camped at 9,000 feet didn’t help, but still. How annoying. It was only a mile or so for crying out loud, and I’d been riding at 7500 or 8000 feet the week before. Anyway, as I huffed and puffed and wondered if I was going to make it to the top, this young guy on a mountain bike came screaming past me…IN THIRD GEAR!!!! How demoralizing. I was so disgusted with myself I could hardly stand it. I did manage to hobble up to the top of the ridge, but not much further, and really, I barely made it back down to the campsite (going down is actually more difficult for me than climbing — I’d rather climb both ways but for reasons I don’t fully understand, if one way is uphill the other way is invariably downhill. It doesn't seem right, but that has been my experience over many years).

In any case, it was lush and green and the weather was perfect. I simply adore Colorado in the Spring, and the higher the altitude, the better I like it.

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View from beside the RV. This is the mountain I would have LIKED to hike to.

And here’s the view looking the other way.

Gateway, Colorado

The whole point of going through Miami was to make our way to Colorado before the biting flies appear in late June. And the first place we stayed in Colorado was Gateway. How’s this for a campsite? Sweet, huh? Gateway is on the Dolores River. If you have a 4WD, you can get to Moab from here, or so it appears from the map. I don’t have a 4wd. I rode my trike up the road 7 or 8 miles and got into Utah, but turned back when the hills got so steep I lost traction. Below you can see the giant tree I camped under. It was the usual Comedy of Terrors getting into the campsite with my ginormous RV, which was not made for turning sharp corners, going down washed-out roads or fitting under trees. Thankfully, I punched no holes in the rig (this time), bashed no dents in my doorframe (this time) and managed to execute a graceful 1,000 point turn to circumnavigate a few large rocks and wedge myself into a space where there were no low branches. This time.

It was in Gateway, however, that I finally lost patience with my rig, which I have clung to like a limpet for the last 7 years. There was a washed-out section right at the top of the hill as I turned to get down to the river, and the whole time I was in the campsite (3 weeks) I fretted about my ability to get out again. I decided I couldn’t take it anymore…I had to have a 4WD rig with some maneuverability. More on that later. For the time being, though, let’s enjoy Gateway, which is awesomely beautiful.

Cliffs around Gateway campsite in the early morning.

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I rarely score a campsite like this. And indeed, I probably shouldn’t have scored this one. I got it because the sane, normal person pulling a trailer that was on the road in front of me rejected it due to good sense. Not having good sense myself, I promptly took the site and blessed my good fortune.

The whole Dolores canyon around Gateway and toward Moab looks like this. Massive red cliffs. Gorgeous.

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Looking across the river from the campsite

This is a sentimental inclusion to commemorate the last trip in my Flamingo Flyer. I love you, but you’ve taken your last bash, ding, hole and dent from me. Bless you.

Miami/Globe/AZ 288

I love AZ 288 out of Miami, AZ. It’s a spot I return to every couple of years. And 2021 was no exception. I returned to the same campsite I occupied a couple of years ago…and suffered the same excruciating fear that I went through last time I came here. The “road” to the site crosses benches of sharp rock. They hammer my tires, and I scrape bottom several times getting up and down. Really, this is another site I have no business being in at all. But the view! The view! Risks must be taken in service to the view.

I don’t think I’ll come to this particular site again. It’s just too nerve-wracking. There are others (I found them on my trike) that have equally good views and are somewhat less punishing on the tires. I couldn’t get to any of them in the RV because the road in was too uneven and the curves too sharp, but I can get there in my new rig.

I barely got out of this spot because even my normal 1,000 point turn was inadequate to handle the large boulders that crowded my way when trying to turn around at the top of the “road”. I scraped a couple of times but thankfully no holes.

Frustratingly, the light was difficult and I’m not sure I really captured how glorious the view of Lake Roosevelt was, so I snapped a cactus flower to make up for it.

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Lake Roosevelt from campsite on AZ 288. There’s a fire back there somewhere south of Miami generating smoke.

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Bluff after bluff…there are some great campsites on some of those bluffs. If you can get there.

We all love cactus flowers, right? They were in bloom when I camped near Miami.

Trona Pinnacles

Here are the Trona Pinnacles. They are basically towers of mud (well, they WERE mud at one time) that formed under water. Which is crazy considering where they now are, the middle of a waterless desert. 

We spent a week in the parking lot in front of the Trona Pinnacles because camping was sketchy. If I had had a 4WD truck, I would have camped among the pinnacles themselves, but I didn’t. The issue was not that I needed 4WD to get to a site, it was that the sites were small and I was large. It’s not easy being an RV. This was before I decided I didn’t want to be an RV anymore, but it was on the way to that point. 

While at the Trona Pinnacles, I rode my trike all through the pinnacles, then I attempted to reach the “lake” several miles away. I didn’t reach it because it is impassible. The “lake” is really a giant alkali flat that has been mined for various minerals that precipitate out of water (not surface water…the water is pumped from wells). I forget what minerals they are. Stuff like phosphate or boron or some such thing. There are many of them. There is a huge “mine” (processing plant) across the “lake” from the pinnacles. The “lake” itself looks snow-white from a distance, which is as close as I ever got to it. I would have photographed it, but, well, why? It was a sliver of white across the desert plain. It would have looked like nothing. You would have thought I was crazy (why did she photograph a large, dusty flat with a few bits of desert grass among many tire tracks? What was she thinking?)

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Trona Pinnacles

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More pinnacles. To give you an idea of the scale, there is an outhouse in the foreground for comparison.

Alabama Hills

When Autumn set in and it started getting gloomy, we headed out of Idaho meaning to recreate in Oregon for a while. However, we were shortly overtaken by an arctic cold front that sent temperatures plunging into the single digits, so we made a run for the desert and wound up in the Alabama Hills. The Alabama Hills Recreation Area is in the Owens Valley near Big Pine. Lots of advertisements are shot there, particularly the kind that show beefy vehicles rumbling triumphantly over challenging terrain…you know: conquer the great outdoors in your 4WD truck, that sort of thing. Because it’s well known that when you buy a vehicle, you actually purchase an entire lifestyle.

To give you a hint as to the exact kind of lifestyle you might be able to buy if you have several tens of thousands of dollars to spare for a large truck, here are some pictures of the Alabama Hills. We actually had trouble finding a campsite there because the whole place was lousy with people fleeing the fires that were all over the Sierra. It is the “gateway to Mt. Whitney”, which some may recognize as the highest mountain in the lower 48 states. Mt. Whitney actually appears in some of these photos, but it is hard to distinguish it from other, almost-as-high peaks in the eastern Sierra.

Mt. Whitney at sunrise. Which one is Mt. Whitney? It’s sort of back there among the jagged peaks in the background to the leftish.

Heart-shaped rock at the Alabama Hills

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Boot Arch

This is what the Alabama Hills are famous for. Just imagine a giant truck surging along in the foreground, bumping and weaving as the rocks loom ever closer…will we make it? Can it happen? YES! We are victorious! <insert brand name of truck here> can take you where no man has gone before! Except the Vagabond Tourist, on foot, tottering around in braces with a hiking pole in each hand.

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Again looking toward Whitney

One last picture looking toward the Sierra…this is really a sky-scape.

The Selkirks

So, while CoVID was raging and I was stuck at home, I spent my time exploring the Selkirks. I’ve lived in Bonners Ferry for 22 years and hardly knew anything about them. It turns out they are absolutely swarming with gorgeous little lakes. Even I, who can barely walk down to the mailbox, am able to reach some of these lakes with braces, hiking poles, monster boots and a lot of persistence. I even dusted off my backpack and took a few two-night trips. I must say, it was tough. My brother, who went with me, has the patience of a saint. In no other way would it be possible to go backpacking with me. Sadly, I cannot hike more than 2 or 3 miles (with a pack on), so I could only go to a few places. Since my brother’s idea of a hike is to scale a 14,000 foot mountain, walk 20 miles and come home by moonlight, all while wearing sandals and carrying 70 pounds of camera gear, he must, to put it mildly, scale back a bit to hike with me. But he was willing, so off we went, and I had a great time finding lakes I had no idea existed in my own backyard. Here are a few of them.

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Trout Lake. This one was tough to get to because the last quarter or half mile requires clambering among boulders. This is not something I do well even with all my braces on. Worth it. Only one campsite though, so at your own risk.

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This was my favorite: Upper Ball Lake. Getting back from here was a nightmare. We spent 3 nights, and it poured rain the last night. The way down is steep and rocky, and my knees kept collapsing and throwing me onto the muddy ground. From which I can hardly get up with my pack on. By the time I reached the car. I was on my hands and knees. Did I say hiking requires persistence? I think I said that. Even so, I simply adore Upper Ball Lake.

The water of Upper Ball Lake is SO CLEAR! All these mountain tarns are clear, but Upper Ball was clear even in comparison with other, similar lakes. There was a remarkable absence of algae even near the shore. Sometimes it was hard to tell which rocks were under water and which were not. Gorgeous.

This is my brother doing what I want to do and cannot at Middle Roman Nose Lake. This was our first or second hike, before I bought my braces, and I simply couldn’t manage the boulders. So instead, I watched my brother wade effortlessly through the lake to catch a view of the upper end, fuming with envy, then I forced him to show me all the pictures he snapped.

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Middle Roman Nose Lake

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This is the waterfall coming out of Upper Roman Nose Lake into Middle Roman Nose Lake. After I failed to wade through the lake, I more-or-less (less, really) bushwhacked around the lake to see what was up there, and this is what I found.

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Upper Roman Nose Lake near our campsite

This is also Upper Roman Nose, also near our campsite, only looking toward the Origin of it All, Roman Nose, looming in the background above the lake. From this angle, it doesn’t look any more like a nose than about a hundred other peaks in the Selkirks. My brother climbed Roman Nose (show-off). What he found up there was an old fire lookout that had burned down and a ROAD. Yeah, I can’t even climb the stupid thing and there’s a road. Or at least there used to be a road. It is not in good repair because the fire lookout is no longer used.

Kootenai Valley, Bonners Ferry

The mustard is in bloom in Bonners Ferry. I think we can all get excited about that. I’m not sure why they grow mustard here. There must be some reason, though, because there is a lot of it. We went driving through the valley of the Kootenai River north of Bonners Ferry, and this is what we saw.

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Strip of fluorescent yellow mustard glowing in the sun

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Canada? Where’s the line on the ground designating the international boundary? I assumed the border would be etched into the landscape.

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More views from the levee

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Giant field o’ mustard

What I love about cats....

One of the things I love about cats is their innate dignity. My cat seems to have completely lost out on this character trait. The only thing she seems to share with the Great Sisterhood of Other Cats is her ability to contort herself into a seriously uncomfortable shape while remaining totally relaxed.

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Congress, AZ

What can I say about Congress? It is one of hundreds of old mining towns in Arizona, and it feels like most old mining towns: gritty and a bit depressing. There was a mine in Congress (predictably called the Congress Mine) which may or may not have been active. The buildings looked pretty decrepit and I could find no record of active mining there on-line, but there were signs by the gate instructing all visitors to check in at the office and labeling a separate entrance for deliveries. Hm. Since it was at the height of the COVID19 closures, nobody was around so I couldn’t inquire about the status of the mine.

About a half-mile from the mine was the only thing I could find of much interest (besides the usual heaps of barren tailings), and that was the old Congress cemetery, which you can see below. There were many marked graves but almost no markers/headstones to tell us whose graves they were. Of the markers there were, most were for young children.

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Sunset near Yuma

Ah, there have been so many gorgeous sunsets in the desert that I hardly bother to photograph them anymore…but this one was special enough to deserve a spot on my memory card.

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Carlsbad Caverns

Carlsbad Caverns are typical limestone caves with typical limestone cave rock formations. They just happen to be very large. They are also well-lit (for caves), and have a paved trail running through them, which is a big deal when you consider the rough terrain inside a cave. Portions of the caves are even accessible to wheelchair users.

Another great feature of Carlsbad Caverns is the fact that the National Park Service has thoughtfully provided railings along most of the (paved) trail. That railing is the only thing that made it possible for me to walk the 2 mile trail without smashing myself to bits by tottering into walls and rock features or falling over 25 times.

I am proud of the photos I managed to take inside the caverns, not because they are in any way unique (like most of my photos, they are the same stuff everyone else takes pictures of) but because I took them without a tripod by leaning on walls and railings and holding my breath while I snapped.

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This is not a Carlsbad Cavern. It is a Native homesite in the park on the way to the caverns.

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This is the ‘natural’ entrance to the cavern. It is natural in comparison to the elevator from the Visitor Center which drops you straight into the cave.

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There are something like 3 or 4 miles of electrical wire running through the caves so they can light up some of the interesting features. Of course, if they did not do this there would be little point in going into the caves at all. ‘Dark’, as experienced in a cave, takes on a whole new meaning. It really doesn’t get any darker than that.

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These look sort of like laser-cut trees that grow from the top down. Which, I suppose, could be explained by the fact that they DO grow from the top down.

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Giant cave-fang

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More cave teeth

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This looks like a decorative, wrought-iron grille

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Fantasmagoria

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Great Smoky Mountains National Park

When I reached Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I thought ‘Whew! I’m finally back in my photographic element’. Or maybe not. GSMNP is a wonderful place, as you can see from the pictures below. It’s very different from other National Parks I have visited, though.

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I took a great many pictures at GSMNP that look similar to these. Why would I do such a thing? Because THIS is what passes for a vista at GSMNP. I hiked up into the mountains (ok, not all that far since I can’t hike well anymore) hoping to break out into a clearing where I could actually SEE the Great Smoky Mountains, and all I saw was this: hilly shapes vaguely visible through heavy trees.

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Another different thing about GSMNP was the Artifacts of Civilization that loomed over the park like the shadow of the Grim Reaper. These are ruins of hunting lodges (and actual hunting lodges are there as well, in fact, a whole village of them).

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In many places it wasn’t all that easy to shoot around the Looming Hand. I had to go to some trouble to exclude the ruins looming over this very stream, and it only works if you overlook the old spring house sitting smack dab in the middle of the photo. Everywhere I went there was an old logging railroad grade or an old house or homesite or something. A lot of the western parks seem to have been formed to preserve natural features, while GSMNP came later, after logging and hunting and summer houses and what-have-you had already been built.

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Little stream close to the campground

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These are ruins too, although you cannot see them because they are so ruined they don’t exist anymore. This is an old homesite.

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More ruins. The bridge is still here but the house is a broken foundation (which I ignored and did not photograph because it wasn’t attractive). Because of the heavy tree cover and frequently overcast weather, the light at GSNMP was what you might call ‘subdued’. Or gloomy.

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It was not until I left the park that I actually SAW the Great Smoky Mountains. There is a scenic roadway that is a separate parklet from which you get (finally) the vistas I was craving. Here are some views from the scenic drive. I thought I took these on Thanksgiving day, but I later discovered that I didn't know when Thanksgiving was and I was off by a week. Strangely, given the fact that traffic in the town near the park entrance was so horrible I practically had an anxiety attack trying to jockey my ginormous RV through it, the parkway was utterly deserted.

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Is this why they call them “Smoky” mountains? Enquiring minds want to know….

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There’s water back there somewhere, in the smoky distance

Library of Congress

While in the WDC area, I toured the Library of Congress, where one of my nieces works. I had thought I would go to the Smithsonian again because one cannot see too much of the Smithsonian, and indeed, I still have not seen all the museums comprising the Smithsonian.

However, my niece recommended that we tour the Library of Congress, so we did. I might have been vaguely aware that the Library of Congress existed, but I had no idea it could be toured, or that there would be anything there to see if one did tour it.

It turns out that the LOC is a building in the Rococo style (again, not aware that existed?) and it is chock-full of representational art and statuary. After touring the LOC, I can tell you that I don’t care for representational art, not because it isn’t decorative and beautiful but because it is like drowning in a sea of incomprehensible details. It is like studying organic chemistry…thousands of random facts that simply have to be memorized because there is no rhyme or reason to them, no system that binds them all together into a comprehensible whole.

Everywhere you look in the entire building there are depictions of…STUFF. The twelve Social Virtues, for instance, represented by twelve giant paintings of ladies in flowing robes holding tablets or staffs or books or scepters and wearing golden circlets and medallions and such. There’s no making any sense of it. Everything MEANS something. There are representations of the branches of knowledge and philosophy and Industry and mathematics and heaven-only-knows-what-all. Apparently the artists who painted all of it used their wives as inspiration for the bazillion ladies that represent every thought that ever wafted across human consciousness. Every square inch of the walls and ceilings (and windows) are jammed with this stuff. It’s all very ornate. I didn’t take very many photos because it was totally overwhelming, and I would have melted my camera into a puddle of goo taking thousands of pictures whose meanings I couldn’t remember if you put a gun to my head. I took about three pictures, and here they all are to give you a flavor of what is in the building. I recommend you see it for yourself, as it’s quite an impressive sight even if it gives you a headache, as it did me.

They also have a Gutenberg Bible there, which is pretty cool.

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Enormous mural (with gold leaf tiles) depicting something lofty and inspiring…Truth, maybe? Liberty? Wisdom? I forget.

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Lovely stained-glass skylights. The triangular paintings underneath are (of course) representational. I think Aristotle’s name is on one of those plaques, so maybe they are all philosophers?

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Yeah…no idea what these paintings are. I didn’t know when I took the picture because by this time my eyes were glazed over and I had a migraine. They might be the Types of Industry or Fields of Human Endeavor or some such. And the triangles might be publishing companies. I know there were publishing companies depicted somewhere on the ceiling.

Finally something I recognize! This is the Gutenberg Bible.

Gettysburg

The second scenic place I went was the Gettysburg battlefield. The entire battlefield (a whole series of battlefields, actually) is something like 10 miles around and it takes hours to see it.

So here is the strange thing about the battlefield. Having recently read an account of the battle which went into great detail about the tactical advantages of ‘high ground’ and the various ‘ridges’ upon which the armies were deployed, I had formed a mental picture of…you know…actual RIDGES. HIGH GROUND. Only to arrive at the battlefield and see THIS. What we are standing on is a ‘ridge’, actually a gentle, almost undetectable swelling of the ground. We are looking toward another ridge, in this case, Seminary Ridge. The brick building with the dome on top is part of the seminary and was in existence at the time of the battle.

I know!! WHAT ridge? After driving around for two solid days from ridge to ridge, I finally was able to (sort of, mostly) determine what was a ridge and what wasn’t, but when I first got out of the car and read a sign talking about Oak Ridge, I was utterly mystified.

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Now here is some high ground that is actually recognizable as being high. We are standing on a practically non-existent ridge (I forget which one) and looking toward Little Round Top. LRT was the scene of one of the many heroic engagements that comprised the battle of Gettysburg. The Union army, which was occupying the ridge adjacent to LRT, had inexplicably left LRT undefended. An officer discovered this and sent troops to the hill a scant 15 minutes before Confederate soldiers came charging down from Big Round Top to take LRT and, from there, roll-up the entire Union line. The entire hill is covered with monuments to various regiments on both sides…a few are visible in this picture.

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Now we are on Little Round Top looking toward Devil’s Den and the Slaughter Pen. Yeah, nice names, huh? It gives you an idea of just how dreadful the battle was. All those rocks are Devil’s Den and the low strip of shrubs in front of them is the Slaughter Pen. What more needs to be said? A lot of blood was shed and a lot of people died here. It was gory and disgusting and tragic.

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I can imagine what you are thinking. Why are we looking at a giant, amorphous black blob covering a picture of the view from Little Round Top? Well, what appears to be a giant, amorphous blob is actually important documentary evidence of the natural fauna on LRT. It so happens that there were millions of ladybugs flying around there, and this blob is one that landed on my camera lens when I was trying to photograph LRT.

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This is the Slaughter Pen, with LRT in the background. It looks so peaceful and idyllic, doesn’t it? It’s hard to imagine the death, destruction and oceans of blood that gave it its name.

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This gorgeous tree is on Seminary Ridge in the midst of the seminary that gives the ridge its name. I struggled with Gettysburg because the things I really like to take pictures of are landscapes. Here I was in the middle of about a thousand inspiring monuments, statues, memorial plaques and battle memorabilia of all sorts, and all I can see are the trees and the sky. Plus a few quaint old farms. So a disproportionate number of the approximately 100 photos I came away with are landscapes. I have Seminary Ridge landscapes, Clump of Trees landscapes, Little Round Top landscapes, Oak Hill landscapes…and so on and so on. No important generals on great bronze horses, no tear-jerking memorials lauding fallen heroes…just landscapes.

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Look, another landscape! This one is looking toward Cemetery Hill. By the time we got here it was late in the afternoon, and I simply could not resist trying to capture the light and shadows lying across the hill.

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This is the Clump of Trees. How it got its name no one knows. I will leave that to you to determine. It is probably a metaphor for some deep and arcane spiritual truth exemplified by this portion of the battlefield. In any case, you will note that there is a cannon under the trees, so this is not solely a landscape. I think we can all get excited about that.

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This is a fence. It happens to be near the High Water Mark, which where the Confederate army reached its point of maximum penetration of the Union line, and in fact, almost overran that line. The only Union presence was a regiment from Maine(?) of 430 or so men. General Hancock (Union) pointed at the Confederate colors being carried by the charging troops and ordered the Maine regiment to ‘take those colors’. The regiment charged the Confederates — 95% of them perished in the ensuing fight. General Hancock later said that he would have sent the regiment in even if he knew that every last one of them would be killed, for they delayed the Confederate charge by about 10 minutes, allowing additional Union troops to rush to the scene and repulse the Confederate advance. The whole story of Gettysburg consists of these kinds of stories of desperate courage and sacrifice on both sides. You can’t come away from it without being moved.

In typical VT fashion, though, instead of photographing the imposing statue of General Hancock that sits at the High Water Mark or the memorial for the Maine regiment, or the other memorial for their Confederate opponents, or the statue of the Confederate officer who led the attack, I was looking in the opposite direction at this fence line, which as far as I know did not exist during the Civil War and had nothing to do with the battle. I like it because it conveys the surreal tranquility and gentle beauty of the area…so bizarre to think of a hideous battle raging in the midst of this lovely, rolling farmland. You would think the worst thing that ever happened here was a bad case of tomato blight or a swarm of grasshoppers — and even that seems like an insult to the peaceful land warming itself in the sun.

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The final stop on the Gettysburg battlefield tour is the cemetery. While everyone else, very properly, was hustling into the cemetery to pay their respects to the fallen before sunset, I was wandering around outside the gate, captivated by the beautiful trees. I just can’t help it.

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And here is the cemetery itself. I have to admit that I am fond of cemeteries. They are usually lovely and peaceful, and this one is no exception; in fact, it is especially lovely and peaceful.