Travel - Day 4 of the Chill

When I looked over the list of topics for the 20 Days of Chill Writing Challenge, I noticed that this one would be the easiest.  It probably will be the longest as well.   I love traveling and try to get at least one travel/camping trip in every year.  Most years, I'm successful.

This past summer I went on a short week (5 days) camping trip with my friend Craig to help him get to Yosemite National Park and hike the John Muir Trail.  I've already written two posts about it, Part 1 and Part 2.  This is Part 3 and a continuation of the trip to Bodie which I started in Part 2.  If you've just stumbled upon this blog because of the 20 days of Chill challenge, I suggest that you might want to go back and read the first two parts before reading this one.

As I noted last time, we got extremely lucky at Bodie as the photographic elements all came in alignment to give me some great conditions in which to take photos.  We had light sprinkles from some thunderstorms that were passing through the area, but we weren't getting wet and the puffy clouds were just excellent.

After we explored the cemetery in Bodie and found a geocache over there, we then walked over to the main part of town.  Several of the buildings are open and we could walk through parts of them to see some of the insides, but it was mostly exteriors of the buildings.  I think I posted in Part 2 that I went shutter clicking happy, and why not?

There have been so many times in the past when I've traveled when I've had totally cloudless skies.  Now, cloudless skies are nice, but from a photographer's point of view, they don't lend much interest into your shot if a third of it is one color or monotone in nature.  Clouds give your photographs some depth, and I had it that day, so I went nuts.

And it wasn't even difficult to go through the images and decide which ones weren't going to see the light of day anywhere outside of my computer screen as I just love most of the images that I had taken.  I experimented with Black and White with almost all of them, but settled on color for quite a few of the images.  But as you can see, I did process at least on in Black and White.

Historical areas like that have always intrigued me.  As we walked around the town, reading the plaques about the various buildings, we just had to marvel at the intestinal fortitude of people who lived in this area in the 1800s.  People were tough back then.  It was hard work from sunup to sundown with not much relief at all.  Creature comforts like forced air heating were non-existent.  Can you imagine living in a place, covered in snow for most of the winter months without some kind of gas heating system?  I would suspect that most of us if we were instantly transplanted back to the 1870s would be dead within a week.  

But since we were born when we were, I think we should feel very fortunate.  Because of the hard work of people before us, we have been afforded all sorts of luxuries, many of which we probably take for granted.  We have that forced air heating, almost instant access to information, a good educational system and the ability to travel and learn about places such as Bodie.

After walking around the town for several hours, taking in much of the site, but not getting to the mine area of the town, we had to leave to get to our next camping stop, which was a good hour and a half down the road.  Because we didn't see it all, I'm sure I will be back to explore more parts of Bodie, including the mine section.  I just hope it doesn't take as long to get back for a second visit than it did for me to get here in the first place.

The top photo is a photo I submitted for the Sharpshooters International Photography Club.  Each week, members of the club submit photos and the club publishes a photo stream every Wednesday.  Please stop by on Facebook (link above), like our page and view some of the fantastic photos that members have to offer each week.

Thanks for coming by for Day 4 of the Chill Challenge.  I'm actually amazed at myself that I've been able to keep this up for the entire time so far.  Of course, I still have 16 more days to go, but I'm getting into a rhythm right now.