Hoover Dam @ Night and some Lake Mead drought

Day or night, I've never regretted a stop at the Hoover Dam. This place is a modern marvel of engineering and a grand human vision.

The star-burst pattern around the lights is an effect typical of many lenses at very high f-stop #'s (very small apertures).

Check out how much the water level has dropped in Lake Mead between the top picture taken in 2001 and the bottom one taken in 2009!

Union Station in the City of Fountains - Kansas City

Everything's up to date in Kansas City
They gone about as fer as they can go
They went an' built a skyscraper seven stories high
About as high as a buildin' orta grow!

At least  that's what Will Parker said about Kansas City in the musical Oklahoma.f

While in Kansas City for a conference, I wandered over (e.g. hiked 8 miles that night) from my hotel on the far north side of town to as far south as the World War I museum.  Of course that included a stop by Union Station which was, for all intents and purposes, completely empty on that week night.  It was far too kind for the operators there to empty the place for me and my camera to enjoy.

Wikipedia says that the height of activity (approx 670,000 passengers) at Union Station occurred in 1945 at the end of World War II.  After that, it was a steady decline until closure in 1985.  It was almost demolished several times until a public/private partnership found means to save the station in 1996.

Here are a few of my favorite images of my private, self-guided tour of the place.

One of the more interesting things about this curvy, wide-angle image is the lighting. Under most circumstances you'd never see such balanced lighting inside a structure with many windows except maybe at noon.  In this case, the light on the left (east) wall was directly from the sun shining in the right (west) windows.  The light on the right (west) wall was reflecting off a large glass building outside and to the east of Union Station.  Confused yet?

Hey that's me.  Or two of me, actually.  All in a long, single exposure, too.

St. Louis Gateway Arch up close and abstract

This is what the arch looks like when you press your toes, your knees, your belly and your chin right up against it and take a picture...just in case you were wondering.

National World War I Museum in Kansas City

Man, I loved this place.

No doubt in the decades immediately following the Civil War, there must have been much more "we must never forget" sort of sentiment.  And it fades.

World War I...probably the same.

World War II...probably already happening.  Although a certain Tom Hanks movie, among others, will help with that.  But 100 years from now, it won't be near the popular topic it is now.

What will happen with monuments like this?  Will the war be so far removed that we will no longer fund such museums?  I don't know.  Only time will tell.

Regardless, I highly recommend a visit to this one if you ever have a chance to drop by.  The view from the tower is particularly fantastic at night.

Front entrance over the Poppy Fields.

Presentation over 'the trenches.'

Front entrance

Grassy field at sunset just north of the museum.

View looking south.

View of downtown Kansas City looking north.

Ummmm...Sir Longshanks of Edmond.  Low sun = long shadows.

 

Grain elevator in Choteau, yo

In the clouds via VAST at Devon Tower

Oklahoma City skyline in high contrast

Taken 0630hrs looking east on a Sunday morning. I was standing at the Ft. Smith interchange.  Fortunately, traffic was light at that time of morning!

The dark line going left to right through the middle of the Devon Tower is a remnant of civil twilight that sometimes shows up on the horizon opposite the sunrise.  It really stands out in high contrast images.  I could have taken it out but I kind of like the abstract representation of the scene.

Getting geometric in Cuyahoga National Park

Cuyahoga National Park is the much lesser known amongst its peers. Situated in NE Ohio, there are some small ski slopes and a number of sites exhibiting what life was like for the early pioneers of the area. I wouldn't travel to that part of the world just for this park but if you are already in Cleveland or thereabouts, you'd be crazy (in my humble opinion) not to go see it.  There is also a very large waterfall near there. My pictures of the falls were all mega-crap so you don't get to see them. ;-)

Old Chicago

This is looking east toward Navy Pier and Lake Shore Drive.  I had a meeting in an office with this view. Something else I had was office-envy. Wow.

This second pic is looking roughly north and you can see the Willis (Sears) Tower in the far background.

Chesapeake Boathouse in B&W

Devon Tower - Up

Historic covered bridge near Cataract Falls in Indiana

This historic covered bridge is just about 70 yards upriver (Mill Creek, actually.  Is upcreek even a word?) from the largest waterfall in Indiana.  The bridge sits in a very peaceful park just a few miles off the beaten path of I70 about halfway between Indianapolis and Terra Haute.

The whole area is a real gem of a place. I consider sites like this one of the great reasons to get off the main highways in America and let small towns tell their stories.  I'll save pictures of the falls (there are two) themselves for a future post.  I'm thinking of making a canvas print of the bridge but they're so expensive it's hard to choose any one picture in particular.

The Cataract general store was closed when I was there but looks to still be operating on some regular basis.

Law Library @ University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Reflections of Disney's Dolphin Resort