Super Blood Moon - The Aftermath! St. Sava Orthodox Church Jackson, California

I love night time.  I've always really been a night person and just love to be out and about in the beauty of the darkness with the stars and moon shining above me.  That's one reason why I get so excited about lunar events like super moons and eclipses.  

This month was no exception as we experienced the Super Wolf Moon a couple weeks ago.  But I had some real, REAL! technical difficulties so I decided to edit some more photos from last January.  Haha!

This post kind of piggy backs on my trip to Mendocino for the Super Blood Moon, so I will post up the links here for that trip.  Be sure to check them out because it was an amazing trip full of beaches, flowers, and adventures!

The Super Blood Moon and Bowling Ball Beach at Sunrise

Beaches of the Mendocino Coast and the Gorgeous Birds that call them Home

Oh So Amazing Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens

Dragons, Bugs, and Fuzzy Flowers

Beautiful Food Photos at the Gardens By The Sea

I got some amazing photos and had a wonderful trip, but I've got to admit that every time I go on a road trip for a Supermoon, I have misgivings once it's over.  I always worry that I didn't get good photos or wonder if I should have done something different.  

In this case, I had thought about a trip to Jackson, California because I thought it would be cool to get photos of the moon with the beautiful St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church there.  So a couple days later, I realized that the moon was still Super, even if it was no longer bloody! (Okay, that didn't sound right.)

So I made the relatively short drive to Jackson, got set up beside the church, and started snapping away. 

The church is on a narrow street which has a hill on the side the church is on.  There are some steep steps leading up to a sidewalk that runs just in front of the beautiful cemetery.  

Day or night, this is one of the most gorgeous churches and cemeteries I've seen.  I need to go back during the day and see inside if that's possible. 

Pretty soon the moon began to rise, almost directly behind the church!  My plan worked!  (So many times it doesn't or I don't follow my plan, more accurately, and then get myself in trouble.)

Okay, I'm not going to lie (and you can probably already tell!) but that's a composite I did of two photos.  I'm not skilled enough to get truly clear pictures of the moon with the church clear too.  But I did get some excellent shots of both!

The moon is a little misshapen because this was a few days after the full moon as these were taken on February 2, 2018.  But the craters are spectacular detail in some of these shots!  I amaze myself with my amateur equipment sometimes. 

I did get one awesome shot of the moon and you can see the roof and monuments from the cemetery too. 

But it was too difficult for me to get detail in the moon when zoomed out.

This was the more normal result. 

Here's another weird one.  But I like weird.  It looks fuzzy and almost painted and yet there is some detail in the moon and the church shows (at least part of it) so I'm happy with weird art.

This is the beautiful entry gate; built in 1894.  

This next one I shot from across the street.  I had to shoot from the side, so everything first appeared crooked.  I had to straighten then and in doing so, cropped off some of the wide views.  I'll have to go back and see if I can get some shots with the stairs and other angles. :)

And, last but not least, a couple of final rudimentary composites!

xoxo

Nikon D3300

Digging for Gold in Bodie Ghost Town!

Welcome back to our tour of the amazing "ghost town", Bodie, California.  In my last post, I showed you some of the fascinating houses, structures, and things I found around the Bodie suburbs like a rusted out car from the 40's.

In today's post, I'm going to focus on some of the interesting facts about the town and post some photos of the remaining traces of the mines.

One important thing to mention is that, like most Western pioneer/mining towns, Bodie has a beautiful and historic "Boot Hill".  The term Boot Hill refers to the cemeteries and came from the fact that many men of this rough and tumble era died with their boots on, i.e., violently.  

Now Mr. Bodey didn't die violently, but he did die with his boots on as he was caught in a blizzard while making a supply run during the very harsh winter of the high desert. Anyway, Bodie's Boot Hill is as harsh and beautiful today as the town must have been back when it was a mining camp in the 1860's.

This is a photo of that stunning high desert sky with the morgue up on Boot Hill.  It's said that there are still caskets in the morgue, although I don't know if they are empty or not.

Here is the memorial for the town's founder, W.S. Bodey.  Pretty fancy and obviously put there much later than his death. In fact, the cemetery is constantly being carefully restored by the Bodie Foundation.

Here is a fascinating article about using dogs to locate the currently unmarked graves. 

A sad fact of the times is that children of the pioneers and prospectors were some of the most likely to fall victim to the harsh climate and lack of shelter and/or food.

But let's admire the spirit in which their parents sought for a better life for themselves and their children.  Like all the non-native Americans, many who died in Bodie came from overseas.  

Here we visit the final resting place of Peter Noonan, born in Ireland in 1948 and died in California in 1894 - 46 years and approximately 5,000 miles from his birth.

Okay, one last photo to illustrate the gorgeous high desert scenery of this remote, yet peaceful place of rest and then we'll move on.

To see more historical gravestones and beautiful sky of Boot Hill, click here.

When you visit Bodie, it is kind of disorienting because you will see things that span from the late 1800s through 1962 when the town officially became a California State Park.

What makes it so fascinating is that there are a LOT of things in the town that were abandoned as it dwindled away.  There are a lot of artifacts that you can see when looking inside windows and even find just laying on the ground, such as the rusty saw in the last post.

The town did not really "boom" when gold was found there and in nearby Aurora, NV.  It didn't even boom when the Comstock Lode of silver was found in Virginia City, which is relatively nearby.  A couple stamp mills were established in Bodie by 1868 but both failed.

That changed in 1867 when the Standard Company found a profitable deposit of gold ore.  The boom began in 1877 and by 1879 Bodie's population was estimated to be around 7,000.  But the boom quickly faded and the minors began to move on to other strikes by the end of 1880.  Wikipedia has an interesting chart showing the population decline as noted by Census reports:

The Standard Stamp Mill as seen through the window of the ruins of a house in the suburbs:

The Standard Mill as seen from the ruins of another house further out in the 'burbs:

This house and it's accompanying outhouse are on a hillside where you can see piles of mining debris.  This hillside is actually not accessible to the public because it is unstable from the mining.

This is not specifically mining related, but all through town and in the burbs you will find crude nails.  

The story is that anyone who takes a nail from Bodie is cursed by the ghosts who inhabit the town.  So, to pay respect to the ghosts, people put the nails in various receptacles around town.

And, just a side note, because Bodie is a State Historic Park, it is actually illegal to remove ANYTHING from the site.  So if you do, it might be more than just the ghosts who'll get ya!

I'm sure you recognize the Standard Stamp Mill by this point.

This is a replica of some mining equipment and is sitting on a table in the school house.

As the minors left, families came and settled in the harsh, remote location and, although the population definitely declines, the mines themselves were doing well through 1910.  However, in 1913 The Standard mine closed and, despite a valiant effort by James Cain who bought up most of the town and mining ventures and reopened the mine, the decline continued.

The Cain family moved at some point, but hired caretakers for the town in the 1940s as the automobile era arrived and publicity by California newspapers of this fun "ghost town" started to bring tourists and vandalism to Bodie.  By 1943 there were only 3 people left in town.  Bodie was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1961 and became a California State Park in 1962.

At that time, it became protected in a state of arrested decay.  They do some restoration work but it is minimal and mainly to keep buildings standing and safe.

That's it for this post, but just FYI on a travel note, the closest town is Bridgeport which does have some lodging (it's a very small town) but there are campsites all up and down Highway 395, the closest I think are down Twin Lakes Road which is about an hour away.

And, if you visit the area, be sure to check out beautiful Mono Lake!

Another beautiful place nearby is Travertine Hot Springs - You're going to want to visit!

But be warned, they are clothing optional, although I saw a few kids with families when I was there.

xoxo

Nikon D3000

Travelogue - Bodie Ghost Town Cemeteries 10/25/2015

I can't believe it's been almost a year since I visited Bodie Ghost Town State Historic Park!  And I haven't even finished editing all my pictures from my trip.  

But tomorrow I'll be visiting Bodie for the second time so I thought I'd better get at least some of these posted.  Tomorrow is the final Star Stories and Ghost Walk event for the year at Bodie.  I won't be going on the Ghost tours (no money, no ghostie), but I'm definitely all in for the stars!

I was already planning to try to do my first star and moon night shoot on August 27th, because it's a crescent moon which is one of my favorites.  And then I realized it was the night of the event and the sky above the high desert is simply amazing!  

So I knew I had to make it happen. 

These pictures are from October and of course this is August, so I'm hoping there won't be so many clouds tomorrow.  Clouds aren't so great for star photos.  But they make some magnificent daytime photos.

So the only pictures I have edited are from the Bodie Cemetaries.  Yes, plural.  

But that's a perfect tie in with the Ghost Walk theme, right?  

It is!!  So here we go.  

One of the sad things about historical cemeteries is how many graves there are for children.  It was a hard, hard life back then.  And losing children was a common trial of the times. 

There are a lot of "lost" graves in Bodie.  The Bodie Foundation is working hard to identify and mark these graves with a little help from four-legged friends.  The next picture  is a newly located grave with a flag for future identification.

And the next shows a grave with a "new" wooden marker.

Did I mention that the high desert under the wide open sky with a bazillion fluffy clouds is amazing?

Buried here are the mortal remains of Waterman S. Bodey...

Yes, the town name is misspelled.  A town painter messed up and it stuck.  Sad thing is, in July 1989, Mr. Bodey did find gold as he set out to do...but he died several months later by freezing to death during a supply run to Monoville.  

And yet, he lives on.  

His legacy is this amazing, preserved by nature, ghost town. 

This next grave is the site of the last remaining minor in Bodie.

The coil of wires seems to be a theme.  I don't know what it means exactly...Google has let me down.  It could just be a touch of the old west or it could be symbolic of Christ's crown of thorns (which is what some barbed wire tattoos mean).

So many graves for children. 

"Think of your child, then, not as dead, but as living.

Not as a flower that has withered, but has been transplanted.

Touched by a Divine hand,

Blooming in richer colors and sweeter shades than those of earth."

~~Richard Hooker

Breathtaking sky over Boot Hill.  

The morgue under black and white fury.

See you tomorrow Bodie!!!  I cannot wait!

xoxo

Nikon D3000