More coal dust and other people's photos

Busy weekend, she's 3 for 3. Next up is a re-visit to coal country.

I say it a hundred times and I'll say it again:

1. I'll get up at any ungodly hour to go shooting with good company
2. Any time my face hurts from the sheer force of laughing qualifies as a 'Good Time'

Actually, it's been a while since I have experienced the latter point. Mr _H (who we met up there) makes such a feat impossible to resist. I mean, even when we got there I knew it was meant to be: I drive a VW with an Apple sticker. He drives a VW with an Apple sticker. He's the first explorer I've met who has been able to talk with quite some authority on IR photography and ND filters. Don't get me wrong: I know that gear does not make the photographer but I split myself into two categories in my free time (photography and old buildings) and very, very rarely do they overlap. He knows his stuff!

The main strike against _H is that he shoots Nikon. Tsk tsk, we have to do something about that. (JUST KIDDING!! sort of) But he is incredibly creative when it comes to group portraits, as proven here. And I learned that IR photography does not make me look fat. (A girl's dream!)



It was a bloody hot day. Inside it's cool and nice because it's dark and sheltered and the breeze comes right through. But... wow. On the top floor, walking into the coal chute you can feel waves of heat radiating from the corrugated metal, even standing 3 feet away from the wall. I was surprised they weren't glowing red.

Despite the harsh weather, wildlife abounds here. We all ran screaming from a crazy bat that flew at our faces, hid from a deadly chipmunk with an impudent tail and froze in terror when we discovered a huge snake in a mound of coal chips. Sure, that's an exaggeration but there is quite a bit of hidden life in the decay. I am convinced that the mythical crane that sits perched on a neighboring hill is really located in the 8th circle of hell - this is the second time I've followed my friends trying to find an outlying building, only to have it escape us. And yet we continue to hike through the thick summer spiderwebs, wasps, bees, and wading through soft dunes of ground-up coal dust, perishing from dehydration and being slowly smothered under the merciless sun. OK, chances are it was just bad to me but I whine enough for 4 people. The point of it is that we never found the crane, even though it's huge and practically a building in and of itself.



At 8 AM the building is a treasure trove of peaceful god beams. I'm ignoring the fact that this also indicative of the carcinogenic soup of coal dust in the air. But it sure is pretty. A few more photos have been added to my original Lauraville gallery.

That's all from me this week. My itinerary in the words of the Utah Saints:

We're coming over southern Utah, we wanna go to New York and then Memphis and see if we can stop off in San Francisco. Not quite sure how that works but... I like it.