Whenever we drive over the Interstate 40 bridge over the Arkansas River in eastern Oklahoma, we are reminded the 2002 bridge collapse where 14 people died. 

CNN – Participants and spectators of a fishing tournament were horrified by what they saw Sunday when a barge slammed into an Interstate 40 bridge, plunging cars and tractor-trailers into the Arkansas River.

The video is from crossing the same bridge on Friday.

Other links:

• Wikipedia
• ABC

I’ve always had the best intentions in the past for blogging about our trips, complete with descriptions and photos of some of what we have seen and done.  Unfortunately, with the seeing and doing, the blogging can’t keep up, I get further and further behind and end up not sharing all that I had hoped to share.

I  think on our next trip that I’ll take a different approach.  During the trip I’ll record what we do and see using the camera, a handwritten journal, and brochures from places we visit.

Blog posts will be developed sequentially from the journal entries and photos at some point when I have the time to sit down and write.  Sometimes a single day of our exploring, doing and seeing may play out over several daily blog posts.

Hopefully this will give me a plan for better sharing of our future trips.  I do intend to continue posting and sharing material from past trips that I have not yet shared or which has become “lost” over the years.

With my current employment situation, we won’t be doing as much traveling this year as we have in previous years, so my opportunities for trying this plan are going to be slim.

The photos on this post are from a 2007 weekend trip to Dallas, Texas.

This image is from Spearfish Falls, near Savoy, South Dakota — the falls are the backdrop. It was taken on  August 26, 2007, and is from another of the lost Exit78 blog posts that I am recovering.

These falls were pretty neat.  However, the lighting was bad.  It was about 2 in the afternoon and the falls were already in almost complete shadow.

[continue reading…]

Images from a  lost September, 2007, Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine

These images were taken west of Bozeman, Montana, on September 9, 2007, on the way back to the KOA campground we were staying at.

Click on the image below for larger size of this composite view.

Two and half men,
Now, it’s a sin,
Old Charlie Sheen,
Screwin’ up a’gin!
(…and a’gin …and a’gin.)

I can honestly say that I’ve never watched a single episode of Sheen’s show.  I also don’t watch much TV at all, but, lately I’ve seen far more of the pompous and erratic Mr. Sheen than I really ever wanted to.

However, I’m not really interested in writing about Sheen’s “situation.”  To me, the real story is elsewhere.

The recent media and public attention has enabled his high profile professional self-destruction.

We’ve seen it over and over again where the problems and  faults of a public personality have been more newsworthy than real world events –  Tiger Woods, Linsay Lohan, Mel Gibson, Britney Spears, etc., etc., etc.  Some stories flame out quickly and you don’t hear about them again until the celebrity screws up again.  Others go on and on because of who the person is more than what the person has done.  Then there are those like Sheen, who jumps on the media whoopla train and rides it to destruction.

The reason these things make it on air, online, and in print, of course, is because people pay attention when someone who has it made fails spectacularly – and, advertisers pay for what people tune in, go online, and read about.

Sheen has crashed, stories about it are are being watched and read everywhere – and his co-stars and all the support personnel for what was the most popular sitcom are now out of work.

I’ve seen more of it than I wanted to and I’m done paying much attention to it.

What about you?

Built in 1875 for $14,000 as the Beaverhead County Courthouse, this building was the first brick courthouse in Montana. Prior to its construction, two nearby log cabins served as the chambers for the first territorial legislature when they met here in 1864.

In 1880, the Utah and Northern Railroad established a terminus in Dillon.  Stock raising and agriculture were displacing mining as the main industries in Beaverhead County, with mining declining as was Bannack, while Dillon was evolving into a bustling freighting center.  Dillon residents petitioned the territorial legislature who called a special election to determine the county seat.  By a vote of 665 to 495, Dillon was chosen as the county seat in February, 1881.

The photo below was taken by photographer John Vachon in April, 1942.

The building remained empty until about 1890 when it was purchased by Dr. John Singleton Meade fo $1,250. Dr. Meade remodeled the building into a plush hotel.  It became the center of Bannack and temporary home of many travelers. A large kitchen, dining room, and living quarters were added to the back of the building.  Hotel Meade operated off and on until the 1940s.

_______

Bannack, Montana was founded in 1862 after a major gold discovery.  It served as the capital of Montana Territory briefly during the civil war.  The last residents left in the 1970s.

“Images from Bannack” are from July 30, 2010, our third visit to Bannack.

How many times have you seen it? How many times have you done it?
I see it a lot and it’s starting to get scary.

I know —it’s hard not to do it.

Everyone else does it.

I used to do it all the time and, last week, I did it, even though I’ve tried very hard to resist the impulse.

Read the rest of this January 4, 2006 post (recovered February 25, 2011).

A few years back, when moving the blog location, I lost many of my older blog posts and images. Recently, while exploring the Internet Archive WayBackMachine, I discovered much of what I had lost.  I’ll be restoring the lost material and will share some of the better “recovered blog posts.”