2004 08, Nevada

This is at Alkali, although there is nothing in this shot except the clouds that are building off in the northeast and looking rather cool.  This morning there was not a cloud in the sky but at about 12 clouds like this started building rapidly.  You could watch them grow.

More clouds, more junk in the desert at Alkali.  This is just east of a large dry lake.

More clouds.  Notice how they have changed in maybe 15 minutes.  The camera is in this shot to show that it is all black.  This tripod is not metallic, so it has the advantage of not getting ice cold in the winter.  Being black it has the disadvantage of getting very hot in conditions like this.  So does that black body camera.

The next few shots are of the gold boom town of Goldfield, which is about 30 miles south of Tonopah on US95.  At one time it had about 20,000 people and was the largest city in Nevada.  A large fire and the playing out of the gold field did the town in, although there are quite a number of people still living here.  It's a tourist destination now, although there is really no place to stay.  You have to stay in Tonopah, which itself is no metropolis.  Anyway, Goldfield is cool because so many of the large buildings still stand.  This next is the Goldfield Hotel, which at one time was quite the swell place.  You can tell looking in the windows that it was quite grand.  I think there have been a couple of restoration attempts that have misfired for one reason or another and now it appears that it is for sale by Esmerelda County by auction.  Bids must be over about $360K.  My guess is that it would take triple that to make it really functional again.

A random shot of Goldfield.

Ditto.  The large building to the left has a famous history but I don't know it.  The lower stone building in the center is the old courthouse and jail, still functioning and in good shape.

More Goldfield.

More.

I believe this was the school, and it is being restored by volunteers.  Looks like a big job.

A capsule history, in front of the courthouse.

To the east of Goldfield is a small range of mountains that have been completely demolished by mining.  They have all been reduced to very colorful waste piles.  I want to go out there and photograph but I have to make sure I can without getting shot.  I don't know what is private property and what is not.

It's also interesting that if one had to locate the Goldfield dump, then locate the Goldfield Hotel, and then locate a place in between them that was the dividing line between the dump and the hotel, one would have a very hard time doing that.  There is just "stuff" everywhere.  I had a bottle of something cold while I was walking around, and I could not find a trash can.  I thought of just throwing it over the nearest fence, or just dropping it.  It would have blended right in.  Perhaps it would have become an instant historical artifact.

This next is a shot of the weather, which has built considerably, from the town of Goldpoint.  This is about 40 miles southwest of Goldfield.  It's smaller and only a few people live here.  I think the guy I met that runs the rather cool little saloon out here owns most of the town.  A photographer I met in Lone Pine told me to check this place out, so I did.  I will go back tomorrow or the next day and take some pictures.

The rest of these are weather shots.  There were extremely wild and very cool clouds to the north, from east to west, with thunder and lightning and clearly visible downpours.  To the south, towards Death Valley, the sky was completely clear.  Someone at the dunes in DV might not even see these clouds.  First, looking south.  The edge of the clouds is really well defined and made all the weather look that much stranger.

This is a road (US267) into Death Valley from the east,  I wanted to take this into a place called Bonnie Claire, which is an old town and mine.  The road has been washed out by downpours over the last week.  Flash floods seem to be following me around.

Looking north on US95.  These small digital snaps don't do the sinister clouds justice.

Nor these.  This is looking south, and these clouds looked like the swirly clouds that the spaceships came out of in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

I guess that's all.  Back to Goldpoint tomorrow.