Arizona – Page 41 – On the road with Jim

Mobil Antlers Picture of the Week

A long time before we moved here, I remember driving through our little hamlet and noticing the old buildings in town. Queen Anne and I were traveling to visit my folks in Kingman, and after leaving Wickenburg, traffic stopped. Thinking it must be a result of an accident, I said to Anne, “We can detour around it by going to Congress.” It was ten miles out-of-the-way, but at least we’d be moving. It was when we reached the village that I saw the structures and said to her, “That’s so cool. I don’t remember this being a ghost town. I’ll have to come back and photograph it, someday.” (As an aside, my detour didn’t work because the accident was further north on US 93. We finally drove over to the river and took US 95, which put us several hours behind.)

There’s a reason why I didn’t remember those old buildings even though I had gone that way several times before. They weren’t there. After moving to Congress, that someday that I had set aside to photograph Congress’s historic district finally came. When I did, it disappointed me to learn that they’re a fake, like a back-lot movie set. The buildings are empty shells apparently used to display someone’s antique sign collection, but I don’t know why. It’s like someone threw up some structures as a tourist attraction and then quit before finishing.

The area of town at the AZ 89 and AZ 71 junction isn’t the historic part of Congress. It used to be called Congress Junction or Congress Depot. The historical part of town was up Ghost Town Road near the mine. In this Wikipedia article, there’s a 1914 photograph that shows how it was. When the mine closed in the 1930s, the town moved to today’s location—lock, stock, and barrel. All of the buildings in the photo are gone. The land was scraped clean, including the mine structures. The only thing remaining is the old cemetery and a shed for Stephan—the mine’s caretaker.

Wouldn’t it be nice if someone bought and moved these buildings along the railroad tracks from old town? I don’t know, because there’s nothing to explain their existence. The only remaining business there is someone selling landscape rocks. Maybe you know the story and can share it with us, or perhaps, when I get a ’round-to-it,’ I’ll investigate and post an update.

I’ve pretty much ignored this part of town for the past three years, but since we’re featuring Congress during March, I wanted to show you what always catches my eye as I drive by them. It’s the Mobil Oil red flying horse sign. I’d like to have something like it to hang on the gable over my garage door—perhaps a Ferrari, Porsche, or one from Sunoco. To be accurate, however, my sign would be for beat-up Chevy station wagons.

In this week’s featured picture that I call Mobil Antlers, a set of antlers upstage the flying horse, so I concocted a fantastic story about it. It represents a tale about a red horse that soars high in the sky. He spots his prey in the meadow below—a handsome buck. The horse swoops in for the kill, and there’s a mighty struggle with the deer attempting to gore the soft underbelly of its attacker. Red-horse prevails and devours Bambi except for the antlers because they’re indigestible. Then I thought, nah—I’m not going to say that—it’s just too bizarre, and people will think I’m weird.

You can see a larger version of Mobil Antlers on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s image and come back next week when we’ll talk more about Congress.

Until next time — jw

Weaver Snow Picture of the Week

The weather here in Congress has been variable. I remember writing last year about the lack of rain, and we haven’t had that this year. It seemed like a new front moved through each week with more precipitation. The winter’s highlight, however, was last week’s snowstorm. There was enough of the white stuff covering our yard that we could measure it with a ruler (inch and a half). We’ve woken to frost and snow before, but this time it came down in the afternoon with temperatures well above freezing. Snow covered the surrounding mountains for days, and it looked more like Colorado than the desert.

During this time, I was trying to find a place for this month’s images, and I decided to stay at home this month and feature Congress. It’s been a while since we’ve done that, and besides, I need to cut down on my gas bill anyway.

This week’s featured image helped me decide to stay local. I wanted to show you how pretty the snow was on Weaver Peak, so for days, I waited for the sky to settle so I could shoot the scene without slogging through mud. Three days passed before those conditions were met and I was able to capture this image. I waited for the last rays of the sun, so that gives it that red glow. I call this image Weaver Snow, and I hope you enjoy it. For me, it shows one of the reasons that Queen Anne and I moved to the sticks.

You can see a larger version of Weaver Snow on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and next week; we’ll show another featured image from Congress.

Until next time — jw

Joshua Bud Picture of the Week

I know that this is near impossible to believe, but I may have been wrong when I claimed that the Joshua tree—Yucca brevifolia—was part of the Lily family. Well, it always had been, but modern DNA testing shows enough differences that botanists had to break the giant Lilly family into 40 distinct species. It used to be that scientist categorized plants by looking at their dirty little sex parts, and the flowers of Joshua trees, yuccas, and lilies look the same. Along comes DNA testing and—bam—Joshua Trees are now considered an agave, and its closest cousin is the yucca. DNA is turning our old assumptions upside-down. I always thought that my father’s family came from Poland, but when my DNA tests came back, they said that I’m actually Lower Slobbovian.

My botany lesson is included—at no extra charge—because I was shooting along the Joshua Tree Parkway this week and saw the trees beginning to bloom. Like other agaves, the trees put out a large phallic that opens to an enormous stalk with clusters of white flowers. Research suggests that frost damages the branch ends which triggers the blooms. If a tree doesn’t experience freezing, it doesn’t put out flowers or reproduce. These specimens grow as a single stalk, and the behavior limits the tree’s range to southwest deserts from 2,000 to 6,000 feet of elevation.

Another weird thing about Joshua trees is that they’re pollinated by the Yucca Moth. Polination happens when it lays eggs on the flowers which turn into seed pods resembling a small squash. If you’re a Euell Gibbons follower, you can eat the flowers and fruit. They need to be boiled or roasted to remove bitterness that comes from alkaline soil … and you’ll want to dig the worms out of the fruit. It has a banana taste, or so I’m told. I’ll stick to Mars Bars.

For this week’s featured image, I wanted to show an emerging bud without clutter—almost an abstract graphic. This image worked best for me. I call it Joshua Bud. The flower was overhead and with a cloudy sky. When I processed the photo, I blew-out the highlights to simplify the background. Like the groundhog, the bud says that spring is imminent.

You can see a larger version of Joshua Bud on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and come back next week when we’ll begin a series from a new place.

Until next time — jw

Rainbow Power Picture of the Week

Like a lot of photographers, I shoot a lot more images than I show. Most of them never see the light of day. On each outing—like last week’s rain day—I’ll fire off 50 to 75 shots and when I transfer them to my computer, I’ll have one or two keepers—if I’m lucky. The first thing I do is to delete the mistakes immediately—you know, the accidental shot of my feet that I get when taking the camera out of the bag—or shots that are hopelessly out of focus. Then I look for the best. I really should get rid of the rest, but even though I may never look at them again, I keep them on file.

There are lots of reasons that I reject a photograph. The composition isn’t right, the focus is soft, or the shot didn’t work. As a landscape photographer, I have a thing about power lines. They’re everywhere, and I have to work around them. That means that I’ll drive or walk a bit to remove them from the scene.

And that brings me to this week’s featured image that I call Rainbow Power. No matter how much we grumpy old photographers groan about them, we still look at pictures of flowers, babies, kittens, and rainbows. We just don’t want to get caught doing it. This week’s image is one of those rejects that I kept returning to it because it shows the range of light last week’s fast-moving storm dragged along the Joshua Tree Parkway as it moved north. Besides, I think rainbows are pretty.

I’ll probably never print this image because of the power lines, but this rainbow was intense and seemed to disappear into the clouds then descend again to the left out of the camera’s view. Oh, and I missed the pink unicorn because it ran over the hill before I could frame the shot. Moments after snapping this image, even the rainbow disappeared. The weather was happening so fast that I didn’t have time to work it—trying different angles, different framing, or changing the site to eliminate the wires. All that I had time to do was capture the moment—warts and all.

You can see a larger version of Rainbow Power on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and next week; we’ll show another featured image from the Joshua Tree Parkway.

Until next time — jw

February Storm Picture of the Week

My mother used to tell me that I didn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain. Did your mom say things like that to you when you were growing up? Mine had a catalog of proverbs, one for every occasion. It’s too bad she’s gone now because after 70 years I finally have a witty retort. Making comments about our mental faculties—my sisters got the treatment too—was slandering our lineage and upbringing. In other words, my parents didn’t give me much intelligence, or they didn’t learn me well. So my behavior was her fault. Take that mom.

Maybe she was right though. Last week, we had a couple of fast-moving storms come through Congress. These weren’t the usual winter fronts that are uniformly gray and dreary. Instead, these storms had layered low clouds with scattered showers interspersed with blue patches. I spent a lot of time staring out of the window watching the changing light, before telling Queen Anne that I was going to play in the rain. You’ll never guess what she said.

After tossing my camera and a spare lens into Archie, I drove up and down the Joshua Tree Parkway a couple of times. It is my current monthly topic after all, and as I said last week, it’s nearby. There were times along the road that I had the sunroof open, so I could stand on the seat to take a shot, mixed with moments where the wipers couldn’t keep up with the deluge. Some shots got away because I couldn’t quickly find a safe spot to pull over. It seemed that there was always a semi filling my rearview mirror. This game of highway dodge-ball went on for a couple of hours before the light got so dim that the exposures were too long to hand hold the camera.

Of the shots that I took, I liked this one best. It shows a squall line as it moved north over Malpais Mesa and lots of Joshua Trees in the foreground. I called this image February Storm. I feel that the gold, gray, and even hints of blue captured the essence of last week’s storms. It also shows that there are exciting images to shoot even when the weather’s not perfect. Just remember to bring a cloth to wipe your camera dry.

You can see a larger version of February Storm on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and next week; we’ll show another featured image from the Joshua Tree Parkway.

Until next time — jw