Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign #20 |
Sign near Conneaut Harbor in Conneaut, Ohio.
Photo by Pbalson8204 at English Wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Accessed March 2017
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If you’re a veteran or in the service, checkout the Lowes military discount!
A couple of weeks ago, I took a copy of my Navy discharge form (DD-214) to our local Lowes home improvement store to sign up for their 10% military discount. I had tried to register online, but, apparently, my service was so long ago, the site didn’t find anything on me. (Cool!)
The Lowes website states: “Lowe’s established the 10% Military Discount to extend our gratitude to the men and women who have served or are currently serving our country in the US armed forces.”
With our do-it-yourself projects, we visit Lowes quite often and have already saved quite a bit. Unfortunately, Arkansas has one of the highest sales tax rates in the nation and, with the local sales taxes added in, sales tax comes up to just a little bit less than the discount.
So now, when I get my wallet out at the checkout counter, I take out 2 cards, the credit card I use to pay for my purchase and the MyLowes card to get 10% off most purchases.
Three from the Road #25 – 2010 trip1
On the way to our next camping spot on July 11, 2010, we made a couple of stops in Casper, Wyoming. The first was the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center. Outside the center, a two-times-life-size bronze sculpture, “The Pony Express,” greets visitors.
“The Pony Express” sculpture by Dr. Arvard T. Fairbanks.
The National Historic Trails Interpretive Center (NHTIC) is a 11,000-square-foot (1,000 m2) interpretive center about several of the National Historic Trails, and is located northwest of Casper, Wyoming on Interstate 25. It is operated through a partnership between the Bureau of Land Management, the City of Casper, and the National Historic Trails Center Foundation. The center offers interpretive programs, exhibits, multi-media presentations, and special events.2
Diorama Theater
The diorama theater at the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center on the edge of Casper, Wyoming, showcases figures representing those who traveled the western trails: Native Americans, explorers and mountain men, the thousands of emigrants who traveled west and Pony Express riders. An 18-minute multi-media program, Footsteps to the West, centering on the diorama, is presented on a regular basis through the day3.
Trail emigrant repairing wagon wheel, Diorama Theater
Endnotes
References
21st Century Digital #23
Bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln at Lincoln’s Summer Home, Washington, D.C. United States 2009.
Bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln and his horse at the Lincoln Summer Home located on the grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home in northwest Washington; D.C.; The sculptors are Stuart Williamson and Jiwoong Cheh; working for the design shop StudioIES in Brooklyn; New York. The statue differs from so many others of Abe in that this one actually shows him with a slight smile; as if Lincoln is greeting a valued friend or relative upon arrival at his summer home.
President Abraham Lincoln and family resided seasonally on the grounds of the Soldiers’ Home to escape the heat and political pressure of downtown Washington, as did President James Buchanan (1857–1861) before him. President Lincoln’s Cottage also served as the Summer White House for Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes (1877–1881) and Chester A. Arthur (1881–1885). (Wikipedia)
Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010630093/. (Accessed March 05, 2017.)
Photograph: Carol M. Highsmith
Medium: 1 photograph : digital, TIFF file, color.
Highsmith, a distinguished and richly published American photographer, has donated her work to the Library of Congress since 1992. Starting in 2002, Highsmith provided scans or photographs she shot digitally with new donations to allow rapid online access throughout the world. Her generosity in dedicating the rights to the American people for copyright free access also makes this Archive a very special visual resource.
Note – This image has been digitally adjusted for one or more of the following:
– fade correction,
– color, contrast, and/or saturation enhancement
– selected spot and/or scratch removal
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See on Flickr
Three from the Road #24 – 2010 trip1
After leaving Fort Fetterman State Historic Site, we drove by way of backroads to Ayres Natural Bridge Park, a free public park owned and operated by Converse County. Ayres Natural Bridge is about 10 miles south of the Fort Fetterman site.
Ayres Natural Bridge, Converse County, Wyoming, July 10, 2010
The 150 acre Ayres Natural Bridge Park is a green oasis located in LaPrele Canyon in the grass and sagebrush covered Casper Sandstone Formation of east-central Wyoming. Red rock sandstone cliffs surround the canyon. A sandstone natural bridge spanning LaPrele Creek is in a rock ridge around which the stream once flowed. At some point, the creek found a fissure or opening through the rock and began eroding it into the present remarkable natural bridge. With a span of 90 feet2, the bridge is considered to be a “young” meander type natural bridge or arch3.
Land for the park was from the ranch of Alvah W. Ayres, who had settled the land in 1882, after working twenty-two years as freighter in Colorado, the last four of which he ran his own business4, It was donated in accordance with his wishes, by his son and daughter-in-law in 1920 to Converse County, to be maintained perpetually as a free public park and to be known as the Alvah W. Ayres Natural Bridge Park.5
Satellite View Ayres Natural Bridge Park (from Google Maps)
Much of the park is level and green, a recreation area in a nature formed amphitheater.
It is a popular site for wedding ceremonies, family reunions, church picnics and other gatherings.
While its original discovery is unknown, it was a known landmark in the early 1940s for settlers traveling west on the emigrant trails, then only about two miles to the north, though it was difficult to access and rarely visited6.
Situated almost exactly one mile above sea level, the park is closed during the winter months, open from April through October. The park includes a picnic area, a sand volleyball court, fishing spots, horseshoe pits, and a twelve free camp sites. There are five large covered picnic shelters which must be reserved in advance.
Though the park is very family oriented, it is not pet friendly. Numerous problems with dogs running off-leash led the park to ban dogs completely in the late 1990s.
For birders, the many trees, willows and shrubs along the stream appeal to a wide array of bird species. Christina Schmidt, in a June 8, 2011 Casper Journal article7 writes,
After just an hour, I had seen several yellow warblers, black-headed grosbeaks, goldfinches, a gray catbird, a kingfisher and at least two swallow species, including the brilliantly colored violet-green swallow. An afternoon spent on one of the numerous benches with binoculars and a bird book would surely have doubled my list.
As many swallows as you would care to count use the area and their mud homes can be seen perched precariously on the surrounding cliffs and under the roof of the adjacent abandoned North Platte Irrigation Company power plant. Everywhere I looked, dozens of swallows were in constant movement, skimming the water surface for bugs and then heading high up to their nests. When I scrambled up the short path to the top of the bridge, the swallows seemed to increase in number and in bravery, since I was now in their territory and several swooped repeatedly just a couple feet from me.
Ayres Natural Bridge Park, Converse County, Wyoming, July 10, 2010
While the red sandstone walls of the canyon seem barren, swallow nests abound along the walls and plant life, including cactus, find purchase on ledges and in cracks.
Endnotes
References
Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign #19 |
Sign on County highway D-32 in Hell, Michigan, United States, locating the official U.S. weather station in Hell. June 22, 2007
Hell, or Hiland Lake, is an unincorporated community in Putnam Township of Livingston County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The community is near the border with Washtenaw County, about 15 miles (24 km) northwest of Ann Arbor. Hell is 3 miles (4.8 km) southwest of Pinckney via Patterson Lake Road. The community is served by the Pinckney post office with ZIP Code 48169. (Wikipedia)
Photo by Sswonk (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Accessed March 2017
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Three from the Road #23 – 2010 trip1
Restored Officer’s Quarters, Fort Fetterman
Constructed in 1867 by the US Army, Fort Fetterman was a wooden Great Plain frontier fort approximately 11 miles northwest of present-day Douglas, Wyoming, high on the bluffs south of the North Platte River. While not the site of any major battle, it was the jumping-off point for several major military expeditions against occasionally warring native tribes.2
Established on July 19, 1867, by Companies A, C, H, and I of the 4th U.S. Infantry under the command of Major William E. Dye, the fort was named in honor of William J. Fetterman, killed in a battle with Indians near Fort Phil Kearny on December 21, 1866.2
It contained quarters for three hundred enlisted men, and the necessary officers; the various magazines and store-houses required for the preservation of ammunition, rations and other supplies; a hospital with fifteen beds; stables for fifty horses; a corral capable of holding fifty six-mule wagons, with their animals; a theatre, an ice-house, a root-house, a granary, a bake-house, blacksmith shops, saw-mill, saddlers’ shop, paint shop, laundresses’ quarters and a steam engine for pumping water from the North Platte River.3
On completion of Fetterman, Fort Caspar was abandoned, with the garrison moving to the new fort. With the abandonment of forts to the north – Reno, Phil Kearny, and C.F. Smith – under the provisions of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, Fetterman became the northernmost military post in eastern Wyoming, important to the protection of the Bozeman Trail and other settler routes.
Fort Fetterman Parade Ground, with Remaining Two Buildings
In it’s remote location, Fetterman was a undesirable posting, with frequent desertions and long, hard winters. Supplies were brought by wagon about 85 miles from Fort Laramie or from Medicine Bow Rail Station, over 150 miles away by trail. Water was carried up the steep bluffs from the North Platte River or LaPrele Creek.2
During the Black Hills War in 1876, a series of major military expeditions set out from the fort. “The Big Horn Expedition, which included three of the post’s four companies under the command of Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, culminated in a defeat at the Battle of Powder River in March. The Yellowstone Expedition led by Brigadier General George Crook engaged in the Battle of Rosebud in June, and the Powder River Expedition under Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie destroyed a Cheyenne village in November during the Dull Knife Fight. Fort Fetterman remained active until 1882, when it was abandoned by the Army as the Indian Wars had subsided.”2
Restored Ammunition Warehouse
On May 11, 1882, the military abandoned Fort Fetterman and the governement auctioned the buildings in September, while retaining ownership of the property. While the building should have been removed by their purchasers, a small community – Fetterman City – was started at the abandoned fort as an outfitting point for area ranchers and for wagon trains, with a population of about 500 in 1885. After the town of Douglas was established along the railroad eleven miles away in 1886, Fetterman City declined rapidly. Fetterman didn’t fully succumb until the mid 1890s when the Converse County Stock Growers Association closed their hospital at Fetterman. By 1907, most of the remaining buildings had been moved to Douglas, while others were torn down for building materials. The two remaining buildings served as a ranch house and barn until the State of Wyoming acquired the property in 1962.4
The weather for our July 10, 2010, visit to Fort Fedderman was sunny, cool, and quite windy, as can be seen by the flags on the parade ground in the middle photo. We were camped at the KOA in Douglas, Wyoming.
Endnotes
References
21st Century Digital #22
Casino Boat on the Mississippi River, Natchez, Mississippi. 2008. October 9.
Credit line: Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010630099/. (Accessed March 05, 2017.)
Photograph: Carol M. Highsmith
Medium: 1 photograph : digital, TIFF file, color.
Highsmith, a distinguished and richly published American photographer, has donated her work to the Library of Congress since 1992. Starting in 2002, Highsmith provided scans or photographs she shot digitally with new donations to allow rapid online access throughout the world. Her generosity in dedicating the rights to the American people for copyright free access also makes this Archive a very special visual resource.
Note – This image has been digitally adjusted for one or more of the following:
– fade correction,
– color, contrast, and/or saturation enhancement
– selected spot and/or scratch removal
– cropped for composition and/or to accentuate subject matter
– straighten image
Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign #18 |
A sign warning about pesticide exposure. Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 15 August 2006
www.cgpgrey.com [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Accessed March 2017
Note – This image has been digitally adjusted for one or more of the following:
– fade correction,
– color, contrast, and/or saturation enhancement
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21st Century Digital #21
Art Deco Column Capital details, Mississippi War Memorial Building, Jackson, Mississippi. 2008. October 9.
Built in 1939 beside the Old Capitol.
A Works Progress Administration (WPA) project.
Highsmith, Carol M, photographer.
Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010630097/. (Accessed March 09, 2017.)
Medium: 1 photograph : digital, TIFF file, color.
Highsmith, a distinguished and richly published American photographer, has donated her work to the Library of Congress since 1992. Starting in 2002, Highsmith provided scans or photographs she shot digitally with new donations to allow rapid online access throughout the world. Her generosity in dedicating the rights to the American people for copyright free access also makes this Archive a very special visual resource.
Note – This image has been digitally adjusted for one or more of the following:
– fade correction,
– color, contrast, and/or saturation enhancement
– selected spot and/or scratch removal
– cropped for composition and/or to accentuate subject matter
– straighten image
