Abandoned Motel, Highway 62

This old motel on Highway 62 in 29 Palms appears to have been abandoned for years. It was probably very nice in it's prime. Very photogenic, if you enjoy this sort of desert decay! The skies were amazing (this was two weekends ago), so posting to Skywatch Friday. Click on the link to check out great skies from around the world!

Dead /dying cactus garden; Motel pool in the background.

Pink brick with old, gritty swamp coolers. Classic desert!

Long empty motel pool

 

Night Sky Time-Lapse

Music credit:  "Moon Rocks", Talking Heads

So I set up my camera and tripod outside last night, prayed they would still be there in the morning and that the wind or a coyote wouldn't knock them over, and set up the camera to take one photo every 10 minutes. Each photo was a 3-minute exposure (other settings:  F 3.5, ISO 400, 17mm focal length). I pointed the camera south towards Joshua Tree, and let the camera click away from about 11 PM to 5:30 AM, resulting in about 38 photos. Pick a star in the YouTube clip and see if you can follow it!

As an add-on to this post, I got to thinking, what would it look like if I layered all 38 photos? Well, let's see... here's what a single photo looks like:

With 3-minute exposures, the stars lose their sharp focus and become oblong blobs because of their motion. Here's what it looks like if you layer all the photos on top of each other (remember - 10-minute interval between photos, hence the star movement looks like dashes).

Not the most beautiful of night skies, but an interesting effect! If you pick a single star and count the dashes, there should be about 38 (the number of photos  I layered in Photoshop, which totally crashed my computer!!). Linking to: 

and 

An Incredible Adventure...

So imagine it's 1955 and the government is giving away 5 acres of free desert land. Free!! All you have to do in return is build a very modest "structure" (box) to improve the property... minimum size something like 10' x 12'... and it's all yours! About the size of a Tuff Shed, maybe a little bigger! Heck, easy, right?

So you sign up for your free 5 acres (sight unseen), look on the map to try to figure out where in the heck 29 Palms is (you've never even heard of it), pack up the Chevy station wagon with all your camping gear, food, and water, and either start building the box yourself or try to find someone to do it for you.

You finally arrive at your location and it turns out your 5 acres is absolutely in the middle of nowhere. Think of remote, and now multiply that by 10! No water, no electricity... certainly no phones. All you can do is put your cots on the ground and you, your wife, maybe a couple of kids, maybe even the family dog, sleep under the beautiful desert sky (and hope the critters don't bother you!).

Almost no one else around for as far as the eye can see! And as you start to learn the ways of the desert, you find it grows on you and you want to spend more and more time there. You might even daydream at work about leaving the rat race behind and going out to the desert to live full-time. What an incredible adventure it must have been. Cars were so much less reliable back then... the trip from LA to 29 Palms must have been incredibly daunting, with frequent break-downs and very few people around to help! Oh, and no cell phones or air conditioning!

So next time you drive through the desert and you see these little boxes, especially common out in the 29 Palms and Wonder Valley area, let you mind start to wonder. What must it have been like? What an incredible adventure it must have been!!

Linking to Skywatch Friday. Check it out for great skies from around the world. Have a great weekend!

Mom's 82nd!

We took Mom out to The Filling Station Cafe today in Old Town, Orange, CA. It's a great breakfast and lunch spot with a lot of character. I think it used to be a gas station or garage, and they have a lot of antique automobile paraphernalia. Very cool!

So, I know I'm not the most observant guy in the world... I'm sitting with my family and notice an overhead window with light streaming in and think it might make for an interesting photo. So I grab my cellphone and take this photo:

It's not till I get home and look at this photo that I even see the signs or realize what they say! Too funny!! I guess that's restaurant humor.  

Linking with   

Have a great week!!