Gravelrash wrote: I meant to say there's a touristy/functioning mine in the city of Bendigo by that name and that the city reeks of old gold money! Nice buildings and "feel".
We have "ghost towns" like that also here in the States. Virginia City, Nevada; Deadwood, South Dakota and the like. They were fabulous in their heyday (1800s) but now are little more than tourist towns; heavily slanted toward selling cheap bobbles and trinkets, "antiques" and confectioners sugar treats.
Gravelrash wrote:... spent the last 5 or 6 weeks exploring all the fantastic ghost towns on their site, "met" David Wright as we shared (my) growing love of Jarbidge ...
I guess you've seen my nearly 1,000 photos I've got on ghosttowns.com. I haven't sent any new ones in years, I've got a ton of new photos of old sites and new photos of sites that aren't on the website yet. It's just a pain to upload photos and navigate large sites like GT.com on dial-up Internet. Now that I don't have it at home, I go to the library 15 miles away and have gotten spoiled with DSL.
You mention your growing love for Jarbidge; you've seen my page on my website on Jarbidge, correct? If not, it's
HERE. It's a very large page and I've recently updated it with photos I took this year and expanded the description and photos of the northern access/egress from Jarbidge via Rogerson, Idaho.
Since I don't have Internet at home any longer, I have to send the files via email to my site's host site owner, who uploads the files for me (you need a special program to upload files to the Net, which the library computers don't have). There's about six new photo thumbnails not showing and about half of them I forgot to put in the coding to click and open full size. I sent the missing photos and revised the page, but Jack hasn't responded yet to my email with the files, so I think he's out of town. But Jack will get to it in time.
I also have another page that focuses on my nearly disastrous visit to Jarbidge (had to evacuate Jarbidge in the middle of the night due to a wildfire bearing down on the town - actually driving through the flames as I was driving out into Idaho), as well as the wildfires that nearly torched my house
HERE.
And my
TRIP 2001 pages cover Jarbidge as well (it's on the 3rd and 4th pages); as well as other Northern Nevada and southwestern Idaho ghost towns.
Gravelrash wrote:GoogleEarth is my friend!
Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Since I've been using the library computers with DSL, I've gotten hooked on Google Earth. I didn't know until the past two weeks that you can tilt the scene and "fly," which has now caused my eyes to blur and water quite a bit after spending an hour or more "flying" around my neck of the woods whenever I get a chance.
Gravelrash wrote:Biggest "mountain" nearby is 1,200 metres!!
There are two mountains in sight of my house are both 14,242 feet high (4,341 meters) - North Palisade Peak (Sierra Nevada Range) and White Mountain Peak (White Mountains). Palisade is 12.7 miles southwest of me, White Mountain Peak is about 30 miles north of me. My entire backyard view is dominated by the massive face of the Sierra Nevada. I'm sure by now you've found a few of my photos on this site taken from my back yard, most in the "Early Winter" thread.
As for Death Valley, the highest peak is Telescope Peak, 11,048 feet (3,624 meters), with many peaks on both sides of the valley over 8,000 feet (2,438 meters +).
Gravelrash wrote: I grew up on a steady diet of Donna Reed, My Three Sons, Leave it to Beaver and Andy Hardy (God I loved Andy Hardy films!), Our Gang etc, but more importantly.... the Westerns! So many, too many to mention, but I spent a lot of time in the old west as a boy!
It's interesting how the US and Australia has shared media stars and heroes. We sent you all the westerns and TV shows; you sent us Paul Hogan as Crocodile Dundee. America was smitten by Hogan. I've seen the first two Dundee films and own both on video tape and watch them from time to time and have a ball each time. The movies really spoof America's love affair with what are stereotypical views of Australia are, yet the movies are humerous and clever enough to come off very well done.
The Outback Steakhouse (I really don't know if this is an actual Australian import or an American knockoff) is very big in California's big cities.
General Motors is now basing a couple of Pontiac models based on your Holden (part of the GM empire).
It's not as big as it was in the 1980s, but the mega-ski resort town of Mammoth Lakes, 58 miles north of me, used to have a substantial Australian population of skiers who'd ski the slopes Down Under during our summer, and spend your summer skiiing Mammoth (I was living in nearby June Lake - north of Mammoth - in those years). Two bars in town were big Aussie hangouts.
Gravelrash wrote: Vietnam was the crucible for me. I didn't go, as my number didn't come up, but it radicalised all opinion here and I emerged, a few years later, not convinced America was an ogre!
Still don't believe it.
I didn't go to 'Nam either, as my number never came up (but I sure had short fingernails from biting them off during the last five years of the war while I was on draft status 1A but never called). America was polarized by Vietnam during the 1960s and early '70s also. Because of Vietnam, the hippy movement was spawned and some of the best Rock & Roll music. Now many of the most vocal critics back then later and now still embrace what they were the most against - consumerism and commercialism - and are now multi-millionaires and aging "Baby Boomers." Times change. People change. Now many Americans - including the media - juxtapose Vietnam and Iraq and the country is polarized again. But I digress ...
Gravelrash wrote:... remember 9/11 and who did it.
I certainly remember 9/11. I thought I had lost my wife (she was flying United Airlines Boston to Los Angeles that day, but her plane was the NEXT SCHEDULED PLANE AFTER the second hijacked plane that hit the Trade Center); I thought I had witnessed the death of my wife on live TV. I've been to New York City numerous times (one of the companies that owned the borax plants in Trona was based in the World Trade Center and I went to New York and Manhattan on the company dime a couple times; also going a few times as my wife and I have friends living nearby) and have stood atop the World Trade Center several times and it is beyond the imagination what actually happened there.
Gravelrash wrote: I actually DO KNOW HOW to relax around a camp-fire, so don't be afraid I'll start spouting politics when we meet up!
That's OK. We're not afraid. Sometimes we get the flames of our campfire raging at 3-alarm status around here at times when politics come up on this board ...