weekend

Memorial Day weekend. While most people are out boating, camping, enjoying one another's company, or memorializing the dead, I was underneath my SUV trying to restore functionality to my transmission. Irony is when you realize that you drained your transmission fluid instead of the oil. My vehicle is brilliantly made I found out, and the only way to replace the fluid is from an overflow underneath the vehicle. So lying on my back pumping red fluid into a vehicle is how I spent my Memorial day. Everything seems to be running better than it was before.

On a side note: my wife is freakishly good at mini golf.

another site

I found a cool site. Its a collection of stories and photos of abandoned buildings throughout the US. I'd say the main focus is on abandoned structures along the East Coast, but there are a few ghost townish places.

http://www.abandonedbutnotforgotten.com

Some of the mental facilities and hospitals would scare the crap out of me. Some of the pictures show old hospital records and documents that would be really interesting to look at.

ghosts

As I've been looking for things to do this summer (besides our trip to Disneyland in June) I've thought of some interesting hikes and adventures around my town. Looking up on the internet I've located some old ghost towns within 50 miles of where I live and with the help of Google Maps have located them. I like going into old mines and towns looking for cool things long forgotten. I like to learn about the history behind the towns and what made people abandon them. Since Utah has been inhabited by pesky Mormons for over 100 years, there are plenty of old boom towns that once saw great activity and then saw decline for one reason or another.

I've been to a few towns and ruins before, but its been a long time, and I didn't do any research beforehand to know what I was looking at. All of this started when I was younger and went hiking up in Millcreek canyon by my family's cabin. There was an old silver mine that had last seen activity in the 70's and early 80's. When I was younger, the doors to the mine had always been locked. That didn't stop us from hiking there, and one time the door had been opened and allowed us to explore inside the mine about 100 yards. Graffiti dating back to the late 1800's and names of the miners dotted the walls. An old Mining car, and other tools were there, the remains of an old refrigerator and a tractor that someone had rigged to pull mine carts still remained in the shed. Sadly an avalanche had destroyed what remained of the shed and its tools a year later, and the last time i went to go to the mine the Forest Service had foamed the mouth of the entrance shut.

There was another mine that we hiked to in the Millcreek area called Baker's mine. I was told that a fire had burned down the mining operation there. Evidently there was a hotel there at one time way up in the mountains. The only way to get there was a serious day hike and even when I went, it was really hard to find. Here's a link to information and some old pictures of the area: http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/ut/bakermine.html.
The entrance to the mine looks like it had been covered a few times. I'm sure bushes and over growth make finding the entrance near impossible today. But telltale signs of mining can give it away: slag runoff, and jagged rock pieces. When I went back 10 years ago there was a small opening I had to crawl through. The mine itself goes into the mountain about 50 yards in two directions, both leading to cave ins. Really muddy, and the old wooden supports looked questionable. Not much else remains of this old iron mine.

So what am I going to do? I'm going to buy a metal detector and revisit some ghost towns and mining areas to see if I can find some relics of the past, indicators of how these people lived and what their lives might have been like. There are some areas that I've wanted to explore that are only accessible in the summer once the snow has melted. It'll be fun, and I'll take pictures of everything. From what I've seen already, people have been able to dig up all sorts of interesting things that show what these mining communities were like over 100 years ago. The towns and sites I'm going to explore probably don't see very many visitors, so there's a good chance at finding something interesting.

poster

I'm way ahead of my time.

For the record: I believe that my sister-in-law won her senior class president election because of a robot poster I made. I don't care what she thinks or says, I single-handedly took her lame ideas and made her a winner. I don't think anyone really cared or knew who she was until the robot poster.

Thank you very much.

rain

Rainy day today.

I guess I can look forward to higher gas prices and indigestion.

I want a burrito.