In a time of chimpanzees, I was a penguin.
The religious right is motivated by the suspicion that someone, somewhere,
is having fun -- and that this must be stopped.
This shack was once a nice shack that a miner lived in. Then the U.S. government passed a law outlawing his mine and kicked him off his mining claim. There were once four buildings here, one of which was a nice home. They're all gone now except for this little shack and the little shed in the background, neither of which are now weathertight.
-- Badtux the Desert Penguin
Ground rules: Comments that consist solely of insults, fact-free talking points, are off-topic, or simply spam the same argument over and over will be deleted. The penguin is the only one allowed to be an ass here. All viewpoints, however, are welcomed, even if I disagree vehemently with you.
WARNING: You are entitled to create your own arguments, but you are NOT entitled to create your own facts. If you spew scientific denialism, or insist that the sky is purple, or otherwise insist that your made-up universe of pink unicorns and cotton candy trees is "real", well -- expect the banhammer.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.
Looks like the bloody Outback. Only, the soil out there is so crap (no organic material, fulla salt, too long since glaciation/vulcanism) that it's even less able to support vegetation than that.
ReplyDeleteTux, lad, you're falling down on the job. You need to post a little map showing where these photos are located (approximately) so that vacationing desert wanderers like yourself can enjoy them.
ReplyDeleteI want to head out to Mojave now that it's winter and I won't die in the summer heat.
ReplyDeleteBukko, this is up at around 4300 feet elevation so it's relatively cool and wet compared to the areas below it. But there is vegetation even on the salt flats below, albeit it's not on the pan itself. One thing that's interesting about the upper Mojave is what's missing -- cactus. The climate is too dry for cactus, which need four or five inches of rain per year to thrive. So it's sagebrush and creosote and saltbrush and white bursage because they're all that can survive.
ReplyDeleteMinerva: One problem desert sites are facing is vandalism from people who are looking for relics or just feel like doing sh*t to historic artifacts. One of the buildings at this site was burned down by vandals. I think you can understand why I'm reluctant to give potential vandals a road map for how to get there, especially given the ease of getting to this particular site (it's at the end of a bumpy but quite passable with any high clearance vehicle 5-mile-long dirt road). To learn the locations of old mines and such you'll need to do some research of your own in the literature, befriend some folks who are interested in the subject, etc. For example, I hiked to two different mines and one other back-country miner's cabin with a group of mine/ghost town explorers last week, though you won't see those photos to protect the privacy of the people I was with.
Dusty, the weather's great out there right now. Well, except for last Tuesday evening when it rained for 12 hours straight ;-). If my camera had not died I would have probably stayed out there for another day, there is a site I was exploring and was nowhere near finished with, but then I could spend the rest of my life exploring that desert and never see everything that was to be seen...
- Badtux the Desert Penguin