Not this one.

My civil war blog, Diaries of the Civil War, is now Daily Observations from The Civil War, with material be posted 150 years after it was written or published.

While most of the material will be from diaries, there will be quite a bit from other sources, especially in the days leading up to actual fighting and on days when there is no diary entries.

Day after tomorrow, the post will be a letter from a little girl to the Republican candidate for President, Abraham Lincoln.  In it, Grace Bedell suggests, “I have got 4 brothers and part of them will vote for you anyway and if you will let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin.”  A few months later, when the President-elect is touring the East on his way to Washington, his train stops in Grace’s hometown and Lincoln specifically asks for her.  The moment of their meeting was later captured in bronze.  Read more at Changing the Face of History.

I’ve also changed the header image on the blog.  I will be changing it periodically as the war progresses.

while we hike over to that next thing over there.”

or words to that effect.

We were on top of Inferno Cone when I heard one of the moms in that group say that.

I couldn’t believe guess nothing should surprise me out in the nation’s parks and this probably wasn’t that big a deal.

Except it’s not a town or city kind of park.  It’s not a playground.  There isn’t any slides or swings.  And – that “next thing over there” was down off the Inferno cone and over at least a half a mile.

I could just imagine those little guys getting tired of playing up there and heading off to find the rest of the group.

Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve is a wild place.  Oh sure, there probably aren’t any bears and there certainly aren’t any dangerous buffalo or moose.

But there are snakes… and holes little boys can fall into… and other places where people can get lost – and, then, there’s the heat. 

Though it wasn’t terribly hot that morning, you can see the heat waves shimmering  above the cinder rocks in a photo taken not long after those above. 

In that whole group of adults and kids, there might have been two water bottles, maybe three – though at least one lady was carrying a good sized purse.

I guess it could be that these folks were from the area, that they were familiar with it and that there was nothing to worry about.

But then again, we used to live in the area and would never have dreamed of just letting our kids “play” in a place like this, wonderful as it was, while we went on down to the “next thing.” 

They didn’t have to be right there with us, but our rule always was that they had to be in sight, even if they were going ahead of us on a trail – never, ever, out of sight.  And that was in the 70s and early 80s.

Perhaps I’m just being paranoid and it was perfectly fine to leave those boys up there to play.

Perhaps.

What  Do you think?

Cinder cones form when gas-rich volcanic froth erupts high in the air and then piles into a mound.  This one, called Inferno Cone, does not have an apparent crater or vent.  The cinders on its top were blown by the wind – and possibly squirted in this direction – from a vent or vents far below.

See the hikers on the trail to the top in the image above?

I don’t know why some of the images of this series turned out with such dark blue sky.  It may be because of the dark color of the ground and way that my camera’s processor interpreted the image.  I think the above images may also have been a bit underexposed.

From the parking lot for the trail, we could see a group of people already quite a ways up – nearing the top.

The same group of people appear in this photo, also taken from the parking lot:

Don’t see them?

Here’s a close-up cropped from the above image—————————->       

We’ve probably been to the top of this cinder cone at least 4 or 5 times over the years.  It is close to the beginning of the park and, by the time that you’re done with it, you might be too pooped for any of the longer walks.

There’s a couple more I’d like to do, but that’ll have to wait until another trip.

Views from the top:

Craters of the Moon to be continued…

Craters of the Moon National Monument, July 24, 2010

To keep wildlife from getting habituated to human garbage, many locations in western states of the US have been using critter proof trash receptacles for many years.

Sometimes they can be a little difficult to figure out, especially if the graphical instruction is missing.

We came across one at Craters of the Moon where someone obviously got more than just a little frustrated – and irate – when they were unable to open the lid.

We thought that perhaps the lid was broken, but, nope, it worked just fine for us.

To be fair, the receptacle with the note was missing the instructions on how to use it.  On the other hand, we didn’t even realize they came with instructions until after we came across one just down the road that had one.

Craters of the Moon to be continued…

Have you ever stood next to a modern wind turbine when it’s generating power?  It’s louder than you’d think.  I wouldn’t want to have one of the big ones in my backyard – or neighborhood – let alone a bunch of them.

1940s artist concept drawing of what a new “windmill” in Vermont would look like in July 1941 issue of Popular Science – it actually looked very different (see below).

Of course modern wind turbines look much different than the 1.25 megawatt Grandpa’s Knob wind turbine that operated near Rutland, Vermont in 1941.  In February, 1943, a main bearing failed and, due to the war, a replacement part took more than two years to manufacture and install.  The wind turbine was restarted on March 3, 1945, but, later that month, a connector failure resulted in one of the 8 ton blades being tossed over 700 feet, where it landed on it’s tip. Tip replacement was not feasible because of the war effort.  With the cost of coal generated electricity substantially the cost of electricity produced by the wind turbine, the project was dismantled.

The United States has added significant amounts of wind power generation in recent years, producing about 2.4% of the total electrical power generated.  The phenomenal growth has been largely due to government subsidies and tax breaks, without which, I’ve read, continued growth cannot be sustained as various studies estimate new wind energy production is more expensive than other sources such as new nuclear, clean coal, and carbon capture and storage.

And, as I’ve already stated, not in my backyard or neighborhood – it’s not windy enough here to make it feasible.

Have you been near any of the large modern wind turbines?

I’m just going to show pictures, not try to identify each plant at this point.

The lava fields are a stark and, sometimes, seemingly barren landscape.  However, there is a wide variety of plant and – even though we didn’t see any of it – animal life in the monument and preserve.

Craters of the Moon to be continued…

Last year, we saw for the second time the remarkable miniature ships created by A. F. Crabtree of Portland, Oregon.  The ships are on permanent display at the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Virginia.  The room is darkened, with accent lighting directed on the models so that nothing distracts from the models.  Flash photography is not allowed, so getting pictures was pretty difficult as I didn’t have a tripod.

The miniatures  were absolutely fascinating to me and Sunday, when I was looking through a 1936 issue of Popular Science online, the model ship I came acroos looked very familiar and, sure enough, the builder was A. F. Crabtree.

It turns out that that model is at the Mariners’ Museum and I had taken a photo it  73 years after the article was published.

The article says:

A fully framed scale model of a nineteenth century British Indiaman by A. F. Crabtree of Portland, Ore., who was once a shipyard worker.  Every piece is exctly as in the original.  The deck planks, for example, are separate pieces.  The blocks are only 1/8 in., but they have working sheaves.  All parts actually work, including wheel and rudder.

Under the second picture:

This side of the hull is planked, but the other was left unplanked below the wales so the microscopically perfect interior details could be seen through the frames.

To give an idea of the scale Crabtree worked at, here’s the image on the lower part of the piece on his work:

I was actually looking through the magazine for vintage items related to RVs and camping.  I was viewing it in Google Books, full view.

How cool is that?  😉

Update: All of my photos from that visit to the museum are in my gallery, The Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, May 10, 2009

This isn’t a new volcano eruption.  This is a descent into the active crater of volcano that is home to one of only 5 active lava lakes in the world.  Too hot for me!

Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, July 24, 201o.

From Wikipedia:

Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve is a national monument and national preserve located in the Snake River Plain in central Idaho, U.S.A. It is along US 20 (concurrent with US 93 & US 26), between the small cities of Arco and Carey, at an average elevation of 5,900 feet (1,800 m) above sea level. The protected area’s features are volcanic and represent one of the best preserved flood basalt areas in the continental United States.

The Monument was established on May 2, 1924. In November 2000, a presidential proclamation by President Clinton greatly expanded the Monument area. The National Park Service portions of the expanded Monument were designated as Craters of the Moon National Preserve in August 2002. It lies in parts of Blaine, Butte, Lincoln, Minidoka, and Power counties. The area is managed cooperatively by the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

The Monument and Preserve encompass three major lava fields and about 400 square miles (1,036 km2) of sagebrush steppe grasslands to cover a total area of 1,117 square miles (2,893 km2). All three lava fields lie along the Great Rift of Idaho, with some of the best examples of open rift cracks in the world, including the deepest known on Earth at 800 feet (240 m). There are excellent examples of almost every variety of basaltic lava as well as tree molds (cavities left by lava-incinerated trees), lava tubes (a type of cave), and many other volcanic features.

Craters of the Moon to be continued…