Halloween Storm

Well, Halloween Eve, really. 17 inches of wet snow with leaves still on the trees brought down many branches. Power out for seven days.

Canal

Reflections in the canal between Moffett Field and the San Francisco Bay in Sunnyvale, California.

Field

Field at Half Moon Bay, California.

KOA Kampground, Madras, Oregon

This part of Oregon is a combination of rolling farmland (irrigated) and dry ranchland with the snow-covered giants Mount Hood and Mount Adams looming in the distance.

Our campground near Madras, Oregon.

When we were kids, the KOA campgrounds always had the best showers. That still seems to be true today.

On The Road to Oregon

We've begun our road trip to New York. For the official perspective, see GWS Takes Manhattan.

Our vehicles in pristine condition in San Leandro, California. 

The Pac Man car, sighted north of Sacramento.

Carquinez Bridge

Heading north on Interstate 5.

California Central Coast Déjà Vu

I drove down California 1 today from Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz, and I realized I'd been on this road about 25 years ago, after dropping Claire off at SFO airport for a rafting trip in Idaho.  I stopped off for the night back then at the Pigeon Point Hostel before continuing on down the coast to do some hiking in the Ventana Wilderness.

Parking lot, Half Moon Bay, California

Pigeon Point, California

Pigeon Point Hostel. Ed Bacher slept here.

Pacific Ocean from Pigeon Point

More Commuting

I took these photographs this morning with my phone and uploaded them to Google+.  So now they're magically in my Picasa album and I can easily post them here.  Haven't quite figured out yet whether I need to cross-post stuff, but this blog is more linear than the G+ stream. (As always, you can click on the picture for a larger version.)

Phone cameras have certainly come a long way.  Compare to the SavaJe phone pictures from a few years ago in this post: http://beanroad.blogspot.com/2007/06/mobile-phone-pictures.html.

Looking toward the mountains in the East Bay from the San Francisco Bay Trail.

My commuting vehicle. I bought this around when Annie was born, so it's about 20 years old and still going strong.

Sunrise over Poverty Ridge (I think).

Update: Nuclear Lake

I've added a couple of links to the end of this post about Nuclear Lake Before the AT.

Nice commute in California

For now, I'm living in Sunnyvale, and can ride my bike to work along the San Francisco Bay Trail. Won't last forever, so I'm trying to appreciate it now.

San Francisco Bay Trail

Moffett Field from the San Francisco Bay Trail

Railroad/Road Bridge in Maine

I just came across this apparently unique bridge in the HABS/HAER archives.  The Free-Black bridge spans the Androscoggin River between Brunswick and Topsham, Maine.  It carries a branch of the Maine Central on top, and a single lane road bridge suspended below.

Free-Black Bridge, Brunswick-Topsham, Maine.
Photo by Jet Lowe for HABS/HAER.

The following picture gives you a better idea of how the roadway is suspended from the steel truss railway bridge.

Free-Black Bridge Road Deck, Brunswick-Topsham, Maine.
Photo by Jet Lowe for HABS/HAER.

This bridge was built in 1909, and I was afraid it might have been demolished since Jet Lowe took these pictures in 1994, but a check of Bing Maps shows that it is still there.

Free-Black Bridge, Brunswick-Topsham, Maine.
From Bing Maps

According to an article in The Forecaster,

After a driver struck a support beam on the one-lane bridge in early April, the DOT closed the bridge and engineers discovered the pressure-treated wooden guard rails were rotting.

The bridge is now closed to traffic, but it's still there, so I'll have to go see it.

Kennebec Bridges, Waterville, Maine

There are a couple of nice bridges in Waterville.  The Ticonic bridge is a pedestrian bridge about 200 yards above the Ticonic Falls:

Ticonic Bridge, Waterville, Maine.

At the falls themselves is a massive railroad bridge:

Railroad bridge, Kennebec River, Waterville, Maine.

Another view of the railroad bridge:

Barrel view of Ticonic Falls railroad bridge, Waterville, Maine.

Lap Order, August 1932

August 3, 1932, Rutland, Massachusetts.

(Click the picture to see the large version.)
This photograph, taken by Harold Judkins of Rutland, Massachusetts, shows the wreck of Boston & Maine locomotives 1435 and 1365. My grandfather was the fireman on engine 1435, and both he and the engineer died in the wreck. The engineer and fireman of locomotive 1365 apparently jumped and survived. The immediate cause of the wreck was a lap order issued by the dispatcher that allowed both trains access to the same stretch of track, but the exact circumstances remain a mystery.

More to come on this...

Jet Lowe in Cleveland

In the summer of 1979, Jet Lowe took a series of photographs of these huge machines used to unload ore from ships on Lake Erie. In this photograph, you can see a ship  (the George M. Carl) docked to the left of the massive Hulett ore unloaders.  Downtown Cleveland is in the distance.

Pennsylvania Railway Ore Dock, Lake Erie at
Whiskey Island, approximately 1.5 miles west of
Public Square, Cleveland, Cuyahoga, OH

The unloader operator could drop the ore directly into waiting rail cars for immediate shipping, or deposit it in the storage yard to the left.

Horseshoe Curve, Altoona, Pennsylvania

Altoona, Pennsylvania, October 12, 1934

 

(Click the image for a larger version.)
This photograph is from the panoramic photograph collection of the American Memory project at the Library of Congress. The horseshoe curve carried the Pennsylvania Railroad at a reasonable grade through the Allegheny Mountains. Designed by John Edgar Thomson (who soon become president of the PRR) and Herman Haupt (who later started digging the Hoosac Tunnel in western Massachusetts and was a Union general in the Civil War) designed the  curve. The horseshoe curve opened on Feburary 15, 1854.

Nicaragua

A year ago, my daughter Libby asked me if I wanted to go with her and some of her friends to Nicaragua to build a house. The last I had heard of Nicaragua was during the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s, when the US was funding an effort to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. Since then, the Nicaraguans have overcome the Contras, the Sandinistan government has been voted out, and voted back in again. Daniel Ortega, one of the Sandinista leaders and the former President, is also the current President of Nicaragua.

We built a house in Guanacastillo, a rural area in the town of Nindiri, about 45 minutes south of Managua. Our home for the week was the small village called Papayal, which consists of a small church, where we slept, a two-room schoolhouse constructed by the government, and the teacher's house -- by far the nicest house in town.

We worked through an organization called Bridges to Community, which has worked on a number of projects throughout Nicaragua, including water projects, medical clinics, house-building, and school-building.

Papayal School, Nicaragua, February 2010

The kids have a great time in school, and they all show up with clean white shirts and navy blue pants or skirts.

Guanacastillo, Nicaragua, February 2010

The houses that Bridges to Community builds are simple but practical. The foundation is concrete on a base of crushed stone for earthquake resistance. The walls are concrete block with steel-and-concrete post-and-beam construction. And the roof is sheet steel welded to steel roof beams for hurricane resistance. Each house has two windows and two doors and a tile floor.

Papayal School, Nicaragua, February 2010

During the week it takes to build a house, you get to know the school kids, the masons, the family for whom you are building the house, and assorted other characters and hangers-on.

 Building Rosa's House, Guanacastillo, Nicaragua, February 2010

If you've read this far and you'd like to contribute to the work that Bridges is doing, go to our FirstGiving web site: http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/bacher/bridges-to-community-inc. Thanks.

Franconia Ridge

Lonesome Lake, New Hampshire, October 16, 2010

It feels like fall here in southern New Hampshire, but it's already early winter in the mountains. I went hiking with my son last weekend in Franconia Notch. We stayed overnight in the Appalachian Mountain Club hut at Lonesome Lake. As we climbed up the shoulder of Cannon Mountain toward the lake, we started seeing snow at about 2500 feet. The boardwalk over the bog on the north side of the lake was slippery, but we made it to the hut without falling in.

We couldn't see anything beyond the lake that afternoon, but in the morning, we had this wonderful view of the Franconia Ridge across the valley.

Connecticut River Ferry at Rocky Hill

When I'm driving back from New York to New Hampshire, if I have enough time, I like to get off Interstate 91 and take the Connecticut River ferry from Rocky Hill to Glastonbury. Ferries are fun, and this is one of the smallest I've seen. The other small ferry I remember is the cable ferry crossing the Missouri River in Montana: the Virgelle Ferry. The Connecticut River ferry itself is an unpowered barge.  A small tugboat maneuvers the barge in a wide sweep across the river:

Rocky Hill, Connecticut, September 2010

As always, you can click the pictures to see a larger image.

This ferry carries three cars, or two cars and about 20 cyclists:

Rocky Hill, Connecticut, September 2010

There's also a great hot dog and hamburger stand on the Rocky Hill side, so if you have to wait, you can have a snack and watch the ferry come and go.

Libby at the Souhegan River

Souhegan River, Amherst, New Hampshire, March 2010

My daughter Libby took this photograph last month with her phone.  She wanted to make sure I gave her credit for the photograph, so here it is. She shows a nice eye in this picture, getting the reflections of the trees.  And getting Cody to walk right down the yellow line was a masterful touch.

Souhegan River Flood II, 2010

Souhegan River at Boston Post Road in Amherst, New Hampshire.  Just at its banks at 7.33 feet on the Merrimack gauge and 3140 cfs flow on the same gauge. You can see the top of the stairs for the canoe launch on the opposite bank. In the summer, this river sometimes gets down to 80 cfs.

Amherst, New Hampshire, April 1, 2010

Souhegan River Flood, 2010

No school today in Amherst.  The school is just beyond the river:

Amherst, New Hampshire, March 15 2010

Amherst, New Hampshire, March 15 2010

The gauge below (from the USGS) indicates that the river may be cresting soon: