2005 07, Nevada

2005 07 29 Coaldale, Luning

Today I re-shot two places I have been before: the abandoned truck stop at Coaldale, and the feed mill at Luning. I was not completely happy with the film I got at the latter last trip out, and I have never methodically gone through Coaldale and photographed.

Here are a few snaps of Coaldale. It took a long time to go through the whole place, and to really see it. There are two long buildings with 6-8 "motel" rooms each, a couple of houses that I imagine the owner or other full time people lived in, a restaurant (now burned down), a garage, and a few other large and small buildings. All of this will eventually fall into the sage or be trashed.

It was strange to see strewn through a couple of rooms what appeared to be the entire financial life of a couple that must have lived here for a time. From looking at the cancelled checks and other junk it looked like they worked in the field for an oil services company, and went wherever the work was. I wonder where they are now. They must be someplace. You can see all this paper in the middle snap in the third row.

Coaldale is also a route point for commercial flights into the bay area, so you see a lot of airplanes in the sky.

And here are a few of the feed mill at Luning. I was very happy with the material I got here. These digital snaps are as close as I could get to what I was shooting on film. I like the light and shadow in all of these a lot. ( I did a much better job getting the horizons level in the film.)

There was some very cool weather back around Tonopah:

As the storm in the last snap got closer there was a lot of lightning sticking out of it, and the thunder and lightning were timed very close together. I got out of the way. The middle snap is US6 looking back towards Hawthorne.