Y’all know , if you’ve been following me for any period of time, that G and I do crazy stuff from time to time. We both love jumping into the car at no notice, and driving with no destination in mind. Or we have a destination, smack-dab in the middle of nowhere. Matter of fact, the middle of nowhere is our preferred destination, because you find the coolest things there.
In Hot Water
Last weekend we visited the ghost town of Agua Caliente, halfway to San Diego. If you don’t hablo, Agua Caliente is Spanish for Hot Water. It was once a resort community built around natural hot springs. Then ranchers moved in nearby, the water table nosedived, and the springs dried up. The community was abandoned shortly after. Its remnants include the abandoned resort and the scraps of several smaller buildings in various stages of decay.
If those rocks loook mighty dark to you, it’s because they are. The entire area is littered by the cinders of a sleeping volcano, and it was those black cinders used to construct the stone walls. (More about the volcano later.)
This is the old resort at Agua Caliente. It’s in much better condition overall than the smaller structures pockmarking the surrounding hillsides. Still empty, though, and boasting a bunch of “No Trespassing” signs, which we always respect.
I returned to my b&w/sepia roots with this series. It feels sacreligious to publish color shots of a ghost town. I always take my photos in color, then use Photoshop to strip away the color. Yes, I could change my camera settings to black and white while I’m snapping pictures. However, I’m never sure what I want the final image to look like, or what I’d miss in pure monochrome that the color snaps could capture.
It Blowed Up
The photo below is a volcano. Specifically a stratovolcano, which refers to its conic shape. It’s built with layers of cinders and lava. Ostensibly this is a dormant field. The official story is it last threw a tantrum over a million years ago. Not buying it was that long, for several reasons related to evidence otherwise… Plus, since Arizona’s last known active eruption was about 1,000 years ago, and we do experience occasional earthquake swarms, I’m not convinced on how soundly any of our local geology is sleeping.
Also not shown in the photo below is the miles and miles and miles of cinder fields nearby.
This wasn’t the only mountain in the vicinity, and almost certainly not the only source for the adjacent cinders. In fact, there are few-to-no visible cinders in this photo; whereas just up the road they stretch out in all directions and are obvious. This is merely the most classic “volcano” shape.
One of the great things about last weekend’s adventures: as you can see, the skies were cooperative. It’s not a given at this time of year, so we took advantage of the light and started driving. It was cooler, too, as my aching body attested. We went anyway, aches and pains be damned.
Agua Caliente was roughly 100 miles one-way from our home. It was worth every bit of the drive.
Down the Line
We went out again this weekend on another ghost (town) hunt, this time to Adamsville. It was an itty bitty place. Nonetheless, between Adamsville and the drive back through new territory when coming home… I brought home over 200 photos, including the kitchen sink.
I wish the light had been more cooperative. I had to edit the crap out of this and the shadows are still ridiculous. We were out early, too, not long after the sun was up. Yes, the sink really was blue. Whether original to the ruined house where it sits or not, I don’t know – but I suspect it might’ve been. You could see a broken pink toilet, half-buried further up in the rubble.
Besides this completely-demolished building, there were a couple of others in slightly better condition.
But only by a little.
We found more trappings of age all along the road, including this trio of old (water?) tanks.
Oasis
It was worth the relatively short trip. We even stumbled over a wedding/event venue out in the middle of the desert. And they invited us in to take photos! The picture of the little canoe up at the top of the page? It’s from the venue. I did my best with the light I had on these, which isn’t saying much.
Not a technically great (or even good) picture, but it was a little less blown out by the sun than some of my others today. There was also more to the venue than the water; but with all the time we spend in the desert, I wanted to switch it up a bit.
One last picture before wrapping this up.
Yeah, I know it’s just a tree and some junk. I thought it was a cool tree, though, and the red thingamajig (no clue what it is, at any magnification) just hit me right.