blood red moon

Spectacular photo, Evergrey

Mayday, that first photo is amazing. I love the second one also.

 

Rob and Florida Guy, thanks for the nominations haha. That block is kind of trashy, even though on the other end is one of the best barbecue/biker bars in the state of NY, the Dinosaur Barbecue. We were trying to find a place to park for Dinosaur and I looked out the window and I just had to take a picture haha.

 

Evergrey, that photo is freaking AMAZING. Wow!!

 

P.S. Rob, Renovo is about 40 minutes west of me and it's on my list of places to explore.

Renovo is truly fascinating.  It is the most remote town with a population over 1,000 in Pennsylvania.  It is quite a trip to find another town in any direction.  It is surrounded by steep hills and dense forests for miles.  Renovo is amazingly dense for such a small remote town... even featuring brick rowhouses along the pristine West Branch of the Susquehanna. 

 

Of interest to Rob would be the Renovo Railyard and Shops, seen on the left side of this aerial:

 

credit: Ron Smith (Lancaster, PA)

http://renovoheritage.org/heritage.html

 

Wow...

Quite a contrast between those two photos. It looks like the railyard is now defunct. In the sixties, my Air Force buddy's entire family worked there, as did a large portion of Renovo's population.

Looking around the region, what was the big draw? The coal mines? I noted some old rail lines heading up into some of the hollows, and remnants of strip mining.

Renovo is near the halfway point on the Philadelphia & Erie Railroad.  The PRR wanted a central location for repair and maintenance of its rolling stock.  Also, coal, fire clay and lumber were in abundance in Clinton County. 

 

railpictures.net

 

 

The past 40 years of Renovo history have been pretty depressing.

 

January 1968 - PRR closes Renovo Shops and relocates to Altoona.

 

October 19, 1969 - Last passenger train pulls out of Renovo.

 

1972 - Tropical Storm Agnes dumps 28 trillion, 50 billion gallons of water on the Susquehanna basin pushing the river over its banks.

 

1975 - Renovo Public School closed.

 

January 3, 1980 - CONRAIL closes Renovo yards permanently.

 

1982 - Renovo PRR YMCA closed.

 

1982 - Saint Joseph's Catholic School closed.

 

1987 - Saint Joseph's Catholic School razed for church parking lot.

 

January 1996 - Major flood of Susquehanna River.

http://www.ncpenn.com/ren_chrono.html

 

Tiny Renovo's economic decline was profiled on both NBC and CBS Evening News back in 1982-83. 

 

Here's a neat article from last year about Renovo being a town trapped in time...

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_533778.html

 

One piece of good news is that a rail car repair facility is opening this year.

 

 

...

 

 

blood red moon

 

That moon is sweet.  Speaking of sweet, it looks like a lollypop with that crane or antenna mast just underneath it propping it up.

Neat photo. That's some sort of excursion or celebrity train, judging by the crowd and the consist of Amtrak Amfleet cars with what probably are private cars on the rear end. Penn Central discontinued passenger service there in 1969, Amtrak didn't exist before 1971 and the Amfleet cars went into service about 1976.

 

Incidentally, I've never particularly cared for the Amfleet cars. They were designed to emulate the look and feel of airline travel, and they felt cramped with low overhead baggage racks and small windows, some of the very things that passenger trains don't need, and that make them more comfortable than airplanes. At least they had decent legroom.

The Hong Kong-flagged Federal Yukon salty freighter unloading tonight at Jonick Dock on the Black River in Lorain:

 

 

 

blood red moon

 

That moon is sweet.  Speaking of sweet, it looks like a lollypop with that crane or antenna mast just underneath it propping it up.

 

Thanks.  :)  It's a crane.  I just got lucky with a vivid blood moon at twilight.  When I started taking photos a few minutes earlier... the moon wasn't visible... then it started to rise over the skyscrapers... a few minutes later and the moon was bright yellow as the lingering rays of sunlight expired.

I saw a red moon just a night or two ago, but it wasn't full like that.

 

A photo from Thursday 8/21

 

What's a Jolly Bar? Is it anything like a gay bar, only with more laughter and less heavy cruising?

Today's photo from the road:

 

Railroad, that is.

Out of sequence, here's yesterday's photo from the road:

 

 

Cambria County (PA) Courthouse, Ebensburg.

Today's photo from the road:

 

Railroad, that is.

 

Gotta get up to Cass, W.Va.!

 

^Park+Vine. More on the block later...

Today's photo from the road:

 

Railroad, that is.

 

Gotta get up to Cass, W.Va.!

 

That shot's from East Broad Top, at Orbisonia, Pennsylvania, an intact narrow-gauge operation from the coal-mining days, complete with shops and roundhouse. Rockhill Trolley Museum is next door and shares some facilities.

 

In case you're still jonesin' for some Cass, I got some here.

 

Today's photo from the road is from Gettysburg National Military Park. The temperature was pushing 90 degrees, so my coverage was more exhausting than exhaustive. After three or four consecutive days of intense sun and excessive heat, I'm actually looking forward to the rain that's in tomorrow's forecast. I have a rain sleeve for my camera, so a little precipitation won't stop the photos.

 

 

 

a good ol' fashioned rob travel diary, I like it. Can't wait for the whole set(s)!

a good ol' fashioned rob travel diary, I like it. Can't wait for the whole set(s)!

 

I may be cutting the whole trip short tomorrow and going home with the photos I have (nearly 800, anyway, with a lot of dups and culls). I'm up to here with the traffic and this sh!thole of a motel. I don't think I've ever had a really bad Super 8 before, but this filthy, run-down pig is one for the books. The building's lack of security made me nervous from the start, and last night I neglected to lock my car for about an hour in the motel parking lot and somebody went through it and stole stuff that's absolutely meaningless to anybody but me - an old straw farmer's hat that I wear when I'm out in the sun for a long time, and my maps, gazetteers and itinerary and a large amount of genealogical material that I was going to follow up on tomorrow and that I don't know if I'll ever be able to replicate or replace.

 

I know it ws my fault for failing to lock up. I love the area around here, and almost everybody I meet is nice until they get behind a steering wheel, and the town of Lancaster Rocks! Lancaster Rocks! Let's hear it again! Lancaster Rocks! Love the historic buildings and neighborhoods! Laaan - caaas - ter Rooocks!  :clap: :clap:

 

Edit: After spending a few hours walking downtown Lancaster, I'm changing my jeer to a cheer. It's a gorgeous historic downtown with a lot of wonderful buildings and a few utilitarian dogs. I took photos of the immediate downtown, and it will take a while to sort them out. After getting smacked upside the head again for dilly-dallying, I decided that it really is time to call and end to this fiasco and head home. I'll be stopping only for sleep, gas, food & coffee. I'm at the Hampton in Gettysburg tonight, twice the price I'm used to paying. No more sh!thole motels for me.

I shouldn't be laughing...but I am.  :|

OK. I'll deal with that sh!t tomorrow. Now that I got it off my chest, here's today's photo, taken between raindrops in Strasburg. There's nothing wrong with Strasburg except the kitsch tourists, and that's a large part of what has trashed this entire area since I used to hang out here sometimes on weekends in the mid-sixties.

 

Here's a stone house built in 1754, one of many in the area that date to the 18th century:

 

 

Sorry 'bout the cables. I forgot my bolt cutters this trip.

<a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/marc.mckinnie/BristolTN/photo#5238659272631702706"><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/marc.mckinnie/SLN02lSE1LI/AAAAAAAAGM0/sBojKynFSsg/s800/DSCN6268.jpg" /></a>

 

Saturday Night in Bristol, TN

UH...

Lancaster's town square, Penn Square is the focus of downtown activity. The Central Market and historical museum, are located right on the square, and a new MarriottConvention Center is under construction there, incorporating an existing historic, ornate building.

 

 

 

Utopia is spelled Vermont:

 

I'll second that!

^^Very nice.

 

Not my job, hon. :-(

 

Near Fannettsburg, Pennsylvania (PA 533 & PA 75, south of Turnpike exit 189)

Ahh, the gorgeous PA mountains...  Great photo, Rob!!

Penna has some great countryside. One of my best trips to NYC was diverting off of Interstate 81 and 78 and taking the back roads.

^ I love going out of my way to go through the countryside.  Williamsport is great because once you drive 5 miles out of the city, you are in the middle of gorgeous mountains and windy roads and all of that fun stuff lol.

Beautiful shot, classy-looking place, Florida Guy. I love it!

 

Now, lets take it to the opposite extreme:

 

 

Last week at the Strasburg Railroad, just south of Lancaster, PA.

Overhang detail of Frank Lloyd Wright's Kentuck Knob house near Mill Run, PA... just down the road from Falling Water.

 

Seen recently in Athens, OH:

 

:-o Good gracious! I must make a note to avoid Athens when I travel Ohio!

 

Something about those photos makes me think it only seems "recently", like a memory that was repressed until you found them.

 

:lol: :lol:

 

 

 

 

Wha the...

Riiiiggghhht.  Anywho

Rob_1412, I also loved Lancaster PA.  Did you by any chance go through Lititz PA (or other small villages) just to the west of there......  Lititz is totally stunning.  Its so strange to see how dense those little towns (Manheim, Lebanan) are out there, the houses are built right up to the road, and go right into the downtowns.   

>Something about those photos makes me think it only seems "recently", like a memory that was repressed until you found them.

 

Those photos were taken by a guy I'm friends with who is 33 or 34 and plays in a respectable band with his wife but recently started playing in a punk band with a bunch of 25 year-olds who lost their bassist.  It's like he gets to go to college again...also I think they're tapping him for funds since the guitarist broke up with his stripper girlfriend who had been underwriting the bands creative activities (aka gas money, pot, beer, etc.) for the past few years.  Seeing that band play was always funny because the guy was on stage and his girlfriend was on a very different kind of stage a few miles down the road at the same time.       

 

 

Rob_1412, I also loved Lancaster PA. Did you by any chance go through Lititz PA (or other small villages) just to the west of there...... Lititz is totally stunning. Its so strange to see how dense those little towns (Manheim, Lebanan) are out there, the houses are built right up to the road, and go right into the downtowns.

 

I didn't get to those places on this trip, but I've been through them before. My dad's grandparents came from the area around Rehrersburg and Little Swatara Creek and I had hoped to go there, but this vacation came undone before I got that far.

 

The smokestack in question (to the right of Key Tower):

You should ask them if you can come up there and take photos. Probably some pretty interesting views, with no glass to obstruct the lens.

 

Where once there were three, now there is only one. (far left side of this photo from 1985)

 

Believe it or not she is walking in...The Ohio River:

 

I tell people all the time that in August and September, when there is less rain, that the Ohio River actually starts getting clear and nobody believes me. 

Holy crap, you can see the base!

 

I swam all but two times in the Ohio. I reeked for the rest of the day, even after showering. It is NASTY.

The Ohio River is actually pretty clean.  It is more than safe for people to swim and use for recreational purposes.  And unlike many other river cities Cincinnati's river is used quite a bit for recreational purposes (boating, canoeing, kayaking, jetskis/seadoos, fishing, some swimming, etc.  The brown color from the mud bottom does often give off a bad impression though.

 

The cows were scared at first, but clamored closer to find out who this mysterious photographer was.

 

Taken at the crest of the Allegheny Mountains along U.S. Route 33 in eastern West Virginia, September 1, 2008.

I tell people all the time that in August and September, when there is less rain, that the Ohio River actually starts getting clear and nobody believes me.

 

The Maumee is like that too. Still, we're just talking two or three months out of the year with clean water. By winter, it's so nasty, it scares everyone away.

 

At its headwaters the Maumee is murky year-around. The St. Joe is the better of the two rivers that flow together in downtown Fort Wayne to from it; the St. Marys is always muddy from agricultural runoff, and when they open the gate on the dam downstream for bridge maintenance and utility work and the St. Marys gets very low, the mud stinks. During drought years there are places where you could step across it, except that you'd sink to your a** in the stinking mud before you got close enough.

 

Mostly what you would catch in the St. Marys or Maumee here would be carp and catfish. I swear there are carp in there bigger than I am. I've seen them feeding near the surface, around the debris that piles up against the bridges. No one ever catches them because no one fishes the rivers with line heavy enough to bring one in. They'd just think they snagged a sunken log, and then the line would break.

Here are more pics of people swimming in the Ohio River.

 

There are two people over on the right

 

 

The eyes are the first thing to start burning, it only gets worse from there...

 

 

But seriously those who have spent time on and around the river know that it's much more exotic than almost anyone realizes.  There are beavers living underneath the B&B Riverboats dock right across from downtown Cincinnati as we speak.  There are also tons of exotic birds who migrate up from Mexico and the Caribbean every year.  In the water itself there is the gar, an intimidating fish if there ever was one.  The river also has many major tributaries with almost no pollution like the Licking and Little Miami.  Sadly the last mass squirrel migration was reported around 1840 so nobody alive today was witness to 100,000 squirrels paddling across the river. 

 

 

^Who needs Florida?  :-D