Of Travel …and Prairie Ghosts

Prairie Ghost - Abandoned Homestead at Ardel, Kansas, 2020

(Mid-September, 2020) If you’ve ever driven the empty spaces of the Great Plains, then you’ve seen them. That lonely farmhouse sitting abandoned in the fields. Boards weathered to grey with no hint of paint. Empty windows. Door standing agape. Roof with missing shingles – or altogether gone.

Perhaps, instead it is a forlorn and leaning barn slouching into ruin; or a solitary windmill with battered and missing vanes; or even a proud old wooden grain elevator standing silent sentinel over rusted railroad tracks. You have just seen a Prairie Ghost – sad relic of past lives and of bygone eras.

In this post we’ll pay our respects to several of these ghosts of the prairies and high plains. Join me now along lonely roads – coming away with melancholic memories …and few photographs.

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Campground Review – Crossroads Ranch Campground and Cabins, Lucas, Iowa

Crossroads Ranch Campground and Cabins, Lucas, Iowa

Description

The Crossroads Ranch Campground and Cabins is a lovely equestrian campground set in the beauty of the rural Iowa countryside. The park has sweeping vistas of rolling green hills, timberland, pastures, and crop land. Miles of equestrian and hiking trails wind through the 360 acre property. This big-rig friendly park welcomes both horse campers and non-horse campers. Crossroads Ranch is a great place to go horseback riding, take riding lessons, enjoy team riding/roping/rodeo competitions, go on a cattle drive, or just relax in the natural beauty of rural Iowa.

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Iowa Through the IR Lens

Historic Roseman Covered Bridge in Enhanced Color Infrared - Madison County - Winterset, Iowa - 2020

(July-August, 2020) As noted in an earlier blog post, I recently purchased an infrared-modified digital camera and am having way too much fun photographing Iowa in IR. I first shot infrared years ago during my film days and always enjoyed the look of stark black and white photos with ghostly-white foliage. Switching to digital IR opens new realms of possibility for my photography.

Like film, these digital enhanced color IR images can be processed many different ways – resulting in different moods and emotional responses to the images. Some images work equally well in color as in black and white – others do not. Here, I have chosen a somewhat stylized and dreamlike style for both the color and black and white images. I hope you enjoy the results.

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End of Travel Season – 2019

Sunset at Chiricahua National Monument, Arizona

(Mid-Oct. to mid-Nov. 2019) This post is a brief summary of the end of our travel season for 2019. It seems we have been so preoccupied with the COVID-19 pandemic that we have put off many things – including blogging. Time now to try to catch up on the blog posts.

(May 25, 2020) First, a status update – Kim and I remain in good health and are sheltering in a campground in Iowa, near my sister and brother-in-law’s home – as noted in my recent post. Now, on to our 2019 Fall travels…

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