Museums, Cemeteries and Abandoned Buildings

My job starts again next week, and as part of my job, I do travel around the state a bit - sometimes for the day, sometimes overnight trips. When I do, I take the camera. You never know what you will find of interest.  To me, most often, it's abandoned buildings, museums, and cemeteries.  So, be prepared to see a lot of those kind of pictures - some this spring, a great deal more in the summer and fall.

To give you  a taste, here's some from locally, taken today on my way to the next town up when I went to do the wash.

Oh and sad that I have to say this, but these are MY pictures, MY work.  Don't take them. Don't use them without asking. Don't assume permission for all if I grant it to you for one. You may not realize it, but not only are these copywritten, each digital picture contains a tag from the camera that took it.  I have that camera, and I will come after those who take my pictures,  in as aggressively legal a manner as deemed necessary.  I do, however, encourage you to take pictures of these same places yourself - you may have a whole new angle that I do not.  If I don't tell you where the picture is taken, feel free to ask. Exploring is fun, thievery is not.

When I was in high school and college, this was a working ice cream stand.  Sadly, I don't remember ever stopping there - we were always in a hurry to get to back to school, or it was night, or like a lot of ice cream stands back then, it was seasonal, so driving past on the way home Thanksgiving, Christmas or Spring break ensured there was no ice cream to be had.  It has been cleaned up quite a bit in the past year; it used to be full of junk.  Maybe someone is reconsidering opening it again.

At one time, this area was heavily slated for tourism. After the fox farms closed their doors and let the foxes go,the area was empty except a few ranchers and die hard miners. Then, after World War II, this area became full of "subdivisions" meant for small summer cabins, and a lot of roadside hotels and cabin complexes sprung up. The subdivision idea was defeated by people who bought up 2, 3,5 lots or more and built in the middle of that, making a lot of the "neighborhoods" look haphazard and unplanned.  After that, a lot of these cabins were rented long term as this became less of a vacation spot and more of a home. In the early 80s, these were still in decent shape.  As you can see, that is no longer the case.

The roadside chimney. Been there so long, no one remembers when there was a house with it.  And honestly, the hill is rather steep for a house, but that didn't stop people. Someone tried to tell me that was once the stage stop.  Untrue - the actual stage stop is two miles down the road, though that building is long gone.

Just some other pictures.

Did I say cemeteries and museums too?  Well, I took some museum pictures today as well, but I'll save that for another post.