New art by AREA

Autumn mountains... love it!

Into the micro

I bought a little handheld USB microscope with a digital camera, to see if it can be used in teaching and take photos of things that are too small to notice with our usual eyes. And yes, it can.

But it doesn't work like a camera - it works like a real microscope since you can't change the aperture and therefore not the depth of focus.  The result is that the depth of focus is minimal.  I think this is something you can get used to, in many ways, it just gives you attention only to one detail and not the whole field.  Of course, if you have a flat object, then you can get better focus...

 I also tried to fiddle with some extra light from a little LED flashlight, which sometimes work. The sensors sometimes get the colors all wrong, blue will be purple and that white background will be white. Things like that should be possible to fix in the software that comes with the camera, but it is not. You need to fix it in Photoshop or similar instead... But, it is a great little thing. I am planning to take many more photos of tiny things with it.

Here are some examples:


The leaf underneaths of the weed purple dead nettle (Lamium purpureum) look like an old, wrinkled man's face. Long gray hairs and sunken parts between the veins.


Sometimes the lack of focus can be used to great effect. This is hairy cress, a spring-flowering weedy mustard plant.


A small coin - flat, so better focus. This is a US quarter (25 cents), showing the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

Happy Birthday, PP!

Full steam ahead! (through the sage brush in Antonito, Colorado...)

Chimney Rock

This place has a natural name for a naturally formed geologic formation: Chimney Rock. 1000 years ago the Pueblo Indians lived here and now it is a San Juan National Forest Area in southern Colorado.  We stopped here, but since we were on our way to Chama, New Mexico (and happened to take a big detour, which was fun), we decided not to walk up to the ruins and the rock itself.  
 
We also ran into several early 1900s Chevrolets in the parking lot with people that were out road tripping in real old vehicles.  We saw them again later in Chama, great fun. .

True museums mark things up properly...

...like this damage to the back of a Galloping Goose train car marked "rotary 02 Vance Junction 1949" at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, CO. In February 1949, during one of the snowiest winters on record, one of the rotary snowplowers at the Rio Grande Southern Railroad exploded at Vance Junction in Colorado and destroyed some other trains cars like this one (and itself). Rotary snowplows were steam-driven plows run first in a train set, being pushed by steam locomotives behind it, The plow boiler powered a giant lamprey-shaped sucking 'mouth' at the front, working like a giant drill/snowblower through deep snowdrifts in the Rockies and the Plains.  The general model is still used today on diesel trains. Here is a great video of a steam rotary snowplow in use in this area of Colorado.

I think this is from the paper at the time, cited on the Narrow Gauge Railroad Forum:

"February 10, 1949, Thursday
Rio Grande Southern Rotary Explodes
The RGS was dealt a severe blow last week when its only rotary snow plow blew up. A crew had brought the rotary in from Ridgway Thursday, leaving it at Vance Junction while they spent the night in Telluride. About 5:30 Friday morning, they received a call that the rotary had exploded.  The plow was extensively damaged, possibly beyond repair. Holes were blown in the boiler, the grates, and chuck were blown out, and the cab was pretty well wrecked. The rotary was to have gone on toward Rico Friday. Left with only a flanger for snow equipment, it is now very uncertain when the road will be opened. "

This happened at the worst possible time:

"1949 was a particularly harsh winter, and the northern/western railroads were buried. The then-standard steam rotaries proved incapable of dealing  with the snow. The railroads looked at several possible solutions to the problem of insufficient plowing ability."(link)

And rotary snowplows are still used nowadays:


(Diesel driven old rotary snowplow at the Colorado Railroad Museum.  Doesn't the front look like either an intestinal parasite ready to burrow into some flesh, or a lamprey or leech ready to take a bite?


"Heavy snows in January 1997 hit the northern/western US very hard,  crippling BNSF operations. BNSF called out at least 6 plows (5 ex BN, 1  ex ATSF), but two plows had severe mechanical problems, so they could not  plow. [...]  In addition to the BNSF and UP plow, two SP rotaries were  called to clear Donner Pass on 23-24 Janaury 1997. This extent and  duration of rotary use has not been seen since 1949."  (link)

Proof here that rotary plows are still being used:

Numbers and words and the world of historic design.

You get different feelings from different size, colors, and fonts, don't you think?  All of these are photos from the Colorado Railroad Museum and depict typography used by the historic American railroads.

I love how they took the time to handpaint these so carefully, and the thorough design and thoughts that went into all decisions before they got painted on.  Power, delicacy, boldness, luxury, efficiency, mechanics, elegance, exactness, and mechanics is all there in these numbers and letters, to varying degrees.  Check out the stencil marks on some of them; can't you imagine the hand that held up the stencil to get it all correct?

Topography

Topography, originally uploaded by and copyrighted by  Calsidyrose.

Isn't this amazing? An old map of a Colorado River canyon, originally from 1895 and published in the J W Powell monograph. Click on the photo to read more about this map. When I first saw it I thought it was a cross section of a strange wooden stem of a liana, they can look similar in close-up.

Gorgeous: Colorado-New Mexico border

colorado view, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

Sky, land and not much in between. Simply beautiful.

Summer memories from Cumbres Pass in Colorado

Summer flowers from the Rocky Mountains - red Scarlet gilia (Ipomopsis aggregata), blue Aster, and yellow monkeyflower (Mimulus).


Which way to go?  The rail will make the decision for you.


Here comes the narrow gauge steam train of the Cumbres and Toltec Railroad through the Tanglefoot curve, shaped nearly like a circle.  It is named after an event where someone jumped of the train at the beginning of the loop and run across to the other track, through brush and bushes.  But his foot got tangled, and he fell, so he missed the train he should have jumped back on.


The Galloping Goose is a funny railroad contraption, unique to this part of the world. With its cowcatcher, silver box, and railroad bell, it looks like a hybrid of train, airplane, and small truck. When the narrow gauge railroads here started to do bad financially, one railroad (Rio Grande Southern) used these customized one-car trains to get mail and passengers to the different stations and save money. They were first made from Pierce Arrow cars.


The Rockies are home to lots of mushrooms, including ones that look just like Swedish 'flugsvamp' (fly agaric), which are popular Christmas decorations in Sweden (and on our Christmas tree too).  This 'baby' mushroom was about 5 cm in diameter.

The perfect name?

Army ant moving truck, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

Seen in Durango, Colorado, USA this summer.

Danger on the rail

Back in the late 1880s, railroading was a dangerous business. This map from the Spatial History Lab at Stanford University shows the number of accidents in Colorado during just 12 months in 1883-1884, with at least 100 accidents. It seems like most accidents happened at the Division Points (Denver, Pueblo, La Junta, and Salida), where there were large stations, with extensive railyards and a lot of switching trains back and forth.  Maybe those accidents weren't as bad as those happening out in the high mountain passes (such as Marshall Pass, up at 11 000 feet (over 3300 m) or so). Check out this amazing map of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad's route up and through the Marshall Pass. The Marshall Pass is the home of the story about the famous phantom train, and has had many accidents over the years, like this one:

"Salida Record, Sept. 30, 1904: Yesterday evening train number 69 which leaves Salida at noon ran away down the western slope of Marshall Pass and as a result fourteen coal cars and the engine are a pile of wreckage at the bottom of the embankment. That no lives were lost is remarkable considering that this is as bad as any of the previous wrecks that have occurred at this exact spot, the last one having occurred about a year and a half ago when Harry Goldwater and Nelson Van Pelt lost their lives." (link)

  

Don't you find it remarkable that this text from over 100 years ago is using exactly the same grammar and words you might find in a newspaper today?  Or maybe, the person typing this in modified the text?  I don't think so though. This would not be true for Sweden, where the language was much more old-fashioned a hundred years ago, and quite different in both grammar and word choices. I wonder if this had to do with that the people that moved out west generally had less education and/or often immigrants and therefore needed 'simpler' grammar in their newspapers to understand better.  There is a nice absence of snobbishness and pretentiousness in these newspaper paragraphs.  Just the news, please. 

Just because of my thoughts above I had to look up a British newspaper from 1904 (Suffolk Free Press), and the grammar is more elaborate, just like I thought (I know, this is just one of hundreds of articles that day, so my statistical sampling is very poor...):

"On Wednesday afternoon a sad and terrible accident occurred to a little boy near Pentlow Mill. The little lad's name was Samuel Clarry aged 6 years, he was crossing the railway line opposite the flood gates near the Mill. His companions were on the other side of the metals and Clarry in his eagerness to join them did not notice the approaching train and essayed on to the line. In an instant the engine was upon him, the buffer knocking him down. The poor lad's right arm being completely severed from his body and his head frightfully mangled.  There have been many narrow squeaks at this place but this is the first fatality. P.C.Kent said the path over the railway was used a great deal during the summer as it led to the flour mill and to the overflow from the mill where children went to paddle." (link)

Of the places marked on this accident map, we visited Denver, Golden, Georgetown, Salida, Otto (which doesn't exist anymore, not even on Google Maps), Gunnison, Black Canyon, Montrose, Silverton, and Pueblo (now a horrific, run-down urban place).  Railroads, past and present, are really engraved into the Colorado landscape and history, and I don't seem to be able to stop writing about them.  Imagining the old times and tracing the steps of history fascinates me, and even more so in places where you can really see the old.  You can't really imagine steam trains in New York City anymore.

 

I think it is interesting to note that there wasn't one single accident on the southernmost route from Silverton to Pueblo on this map (this is the line going through Durango, Chama, Antonito, and Alamosa).  Either they 'forgot' to report accidents, the mapmaker didn't have any data, there weren't any trains that year (I doubt that), or the southern engineers were masters at running trains.  That accident free route is the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad narrow gauge line that we rode, both from Durango to Silverton (will be posted here later), and from Antonito to Chama (see here). There weren't any accidents on this line in 2010 either, that I know of.

Rail thoughts...

 
A hundred years ago this was the way of traveling in style, but also out of necessity. Instead of bumping along in a stage coach over rocky roads, up and down for days at end, you could have a (rather) smooth ride in a railroad car - what a treat! Today we drive in our air conditioned or heated cars, up and down mountain passes, across deserts, through mountains, and over gulches on steel bridges and take it all for granted.  Only the weather can stop us, but rarely does.


I wonder how many of us could survive if we suddenly were dumped back in the late 1800s - when basic things like hot showers, shampoo, clean clothes, edible food, and lice-free beds were scarce, non-existent, or only for the really rich. But the really rich would have had to take the stage coaches or steam trains into the mountains as well; when it came to transportation people became more equal.


Riding the narrow gauge steam train on the "high line" over Cascade Canyon and Animas River might have been the thing to do back then as a tourist, just as today some people bungee jump, swim with sharks, and go whale watching. But the railroads, at least in the Rockies, were not built for tourists even if they filled that role later.  The railroads were built for financial reasons, and out of necessity.  The silver, gold, and iron needed to get out of the mountains to fill the pockets of the rich, and the food and supplies needed to get into the mountains to feed the miners. The rich tourists followed the iron tracks, up into new exciting territories.

An iron horse with many cars behind it was far more dependable and could pull so much more weight than stage coaches and mule trains (large packs of mules carrying supplies). Pork (bacon!), whiskey, flour, shovels, and hay were pulled into the high valleys to feed everybody, mostly men and mules. Before the railroads came, towns like Silverton were often isolated from the rest of the world for many months during the harsh winters.  What a life, and what a difference the steam trains must have made.

(written during our Colorado-New Mexico trip this past summer)

Like a snake nest...

rusty chains, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

... are these old rusty chains at the Argo Gold Mine in Idaho Springs, Colorado.

Alternative uses...

ski fence, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

We have a saying in our family in Swedish that is something like: "All ways are good except the bad ones", implying that there are many ways of doing things, and some things just don't work out the way you thought. Here is an innovative new way of using broken skis as a fence in Colorado. The photo is from Idaho Springs in the Rockies, a place that is also home to the Argo Gold Mine and the Argo Tunnel. We stopped by the mine and admired the old rusty machines and restored mining building through the locked fence. More photos of Argo here.  It is amazing how much old history is visible in the Rockies.  Here there are no vines (grapes, rosebushes, briars, etc.) that are covering up the old buildings, and the dry air preserves both wood and metal much longer than the eastern and southern humid summers.  There are also a lot less people, more space, so a metal nail that was dropped 80 years ago, might still be laying on the side of the road. 

Book Review: A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird

" I had gone to sleep with six blankets on, and a heavy sheet over my face. Between two and three I was awoke by the cabin being shifted from underneath by the wind, and the sheet was frozen to my lips. I put out my hands, and the bed was thickly covered with fine snow.  Getting up to investigate matters, I found the floor some inches deep in parts in fine snow, and a gust of fine, needle-like snow stung my face. The bucket of water was solid ice.  I lay in bed freezing till sunrise, when some of the men came to see if I 'was alive', and to dig me out. They brought a can of hot water, which turned to ice before I could use it."

Isabella Bird is not a modern-day author, she lived in the 1800s, and traveled the world as a single, fearless woman and wrote about her adventures in letters back to her sister in England.  Her travel letters in the Rocky Mountains are collected in this little volume called "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains", now a real classic, that I happened to find right before we decided to spend some time in Colorado this summer. I started reading it on the plane to Denver, and I was hooked.

Isabella describes her travels from San Francisco via trains over the Sierra Nevada, then to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and on to Fort Collins, Colorado.  From there she is adamant about getting up into the Rocky Mountains, where no railroads yet have come (this is before the big railroad era in the Colorado Rockies, and the mining had just started).  She buys a horse, travels alone, and takes in as a boarder at the local houses and farms along the way.  She stays a long time at Estes Park, part of it involuntarily in the winter (see above), and she also visits Denver, Colorado Springs, and passes over many mountain passes.  In time she becomes famous for her ability to negotiate bad trails and bad weather.



Her book is full of detailed and funny descriptions of people she meet, and the everyday life they live.  I would guess this is probably one of the few books that describes the often poor and miserably life many pioneer women (and men) lived out West, living in squalor, without enough food and in very harsh weather.  But she also describes nature in exquisite detail, from sunsets to conifer forests, geologic features, rushing rapids of waters in canyons, and snow and stormy winds during dark nights far from her cabin. Her feelings of isolation and appreciation of company is true.

But what gets me most is that this is a real person writing, someone that experienced it all and wrote down her thoughts in her diary-like letters to her sister, never to think they ever would get published.  The letters are raw and honest, but beautiful and so well-written it is unbelievable she wrote them with ink pen at candlelight under sometimes very harsh circumstances. But Isabella is perpetually encouraging, even in dark or dangerous moments.

"I rode up one great ascent where hills were tumbled about confusedly; and suddenly across the broad ravine, rising above the sunny grass and the deep-green pines, rose in glowing and shaded red against the glittering blue heaven a magnificent and unearthly range of mountains, as shapely as could be seen, rising into colossal points, cleft by deep blue ravines, broken up into sharks' teeth, with gigantic knobs and pinnacles rising from their inaccessible sides, very fair to look upon, a glowing heavenly, unforgettable sight, and only four miles off."

This is a Highly Recommended book, I loved it!

A car for....

Generic SUV, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

....pretenders, pragmatics, or vintage nerds? Check out the bumper sticker. Seen in Colorado, by the Georgetown Loop Railroad. SUV in Swedish is 'stadsjeep', which means "city jeep". This truck is certainly not a city car.

Loopy Georgetown

There is a Rocky Mountain pass along Clear Creek in Colorado that is very steep, and for a long time flummoxed the railroad engineers that wanted to lead the train up to the higher altitude silver mines (Silver Plume, etc.), so the silver could come out and the necessaries come in without having to be transported on long 'mule trains'.  Many times a mule or donkey (called 'burro' from the Spanish) couldn't get through the high passes during the winters, and a railroad could also take so much more weight.  But Georgetown was a steep, steep problem (since locomotives can't go up as steep hills as mules, diesel trucks, and mountain goats).

 

(Pack mules at a mine, photo by W.G. Chamberlain)

But the Union Pacific Chief Engineer, Jacob Blickensderfer, had a heureka moment, and designed and built something completely new - a loop.  You go up on side of the mountain, turn in the inside of the valley, continue up on the other side away from the direction you want to go, higher and higher, and then, aha!, build a trestle (bridge) across the valley to get the train across at a much higher altitude so the train can continue up and pass the pass. Silver Plume was reached by train in 1884.

(1899 colored photo, Public Domain, Library of Congress)

So they built the railroad, got the silver out and the people in. In the late 1800s this was one of the wonders of the world and railroad tourists came here just to see the trains pass across the valley. 

( Beaver Brook Station in Clear Creek Canyon, photo by W.G. Chamberlain)

The rail was narrower than normal, narrow gauge (in Swedish: smalspår = small track), which is common in the mountains. It was both cheaper and better, since trains were lighter and could also turn sharper corners if they had less space between their wheels. When the railroads closed down and went bankrupt (for several reasons, more on this later), the trestle and rails rusted away and were taken down. In the 1970s some real railfans (that is their nick name) decided to build up an exact replica of the Georgetown Loop and put in the rails ago to let the trains run. They raised the money, built it, and here it is again. So you can see it, with original steam trains on it.  Of course we went there on our Colorado trip for a short stop on our way into the mountains. 

The trestle (photo by me, more here)

Georgetown Loop Railroad - a new and old tourist attraction.(photo from Flickr copyright by El Engr).

Stamps of the day: Colorado

This state has been featured on many stamps - no wonder since it is full of wonder.  The flower is a blue columbine (Aquilegia), the state flower. More on our travels in Colorado soon.  Yes, it is really Rocky.