New Idria Mine and Ghost Town
- The Rotary Furnace building at New Idria which contained the four Gould Rotary furnaces.
Over the holidays Randy and I decided to explore a place that his father had told us of; an old quicksilver mine and ghost town called New Idria. Randy’s father had been there a long time ago. The mine was opened in 1854 and was named after the world’s second largest quicksilver producer in Idria, Slovenia. The town grew up around the mine with the local population eventually reaching more than 3,000 people. The mine was closed in 1972 due to falling quicksilver prices. The town still contains many historic buildings although many buildings are in extreme disrepair and the furnace building and some other buildings are fenced off.
Read MoreColorful Sunsets in Yosemite National Park
Last month I made reservations in one of our favorite places, Yosemite National Park, for an “all U can heat” Camp Curry tent cabin during the full moon and off we went for the weekend. The “all U can heat” special runs for only certain dates. You pay what the temperature was the night before plus $20. This is a great deal! Camp Curry was sold out Friday and Saturday nights for that weekend, so we stayed at the Yosemite Inn in Mariposa on Saturday and checked into Camp Curry on Sunday. Monday was a holiday so we were able to stay for an extra day. It is so nice to live close enough to go to such an amazing place like Yosemite for the weekend.
Read MoreNon-diver? Don’t worry, Bonaire has lots of fun non-diving activities!
- Enjoying our jaunt to beautiful Lac Bai.
In 2008 Randy and I went to Bonaire with another couple, one of whom wasn’t a diver. This is a pretty common situation where a dive group or couple has a member that isn’t a diver or maybe isn’t as avid a diver as the rest. Sometimes that person may be happy sitting by the pool or the beach reading a book but not always. Because we had a non-diver in our group on that trip we ended up doing a lot of non-dive related land-based activities. Bonaire is a small island. It takes less than one day to drive all the way around Bonaire. But there are a surprising amount of non-diving activities for such a small island. This blog features some of the fun land-based activities on Bonaire.
Read MoreMonterey Shootout, Winning and Non-winning Images
This is going to be a photo blog featuring a few images from the recent Monterey Shootout which I participated in. The shootout was organized jointly by the Northern California Underwater Photographic Society (NCUPS) and Berkley White (owner Backscatter Underwater Video & Photo). It was really fun although the diving was not the greatest. The film festival Saturday night had excellent presentations by top underwater photographers/videographers featuring big animals; whales, sharks, manta rays. So cool!
Read MoreMonterey dive ends in a burst of bubbles!
The day started out so nicely. It was the NCUPS quarterly dive at Wharf II and there were about twelve of us participating including spotters (required by the harbormaster when diving under the wharf). It was foggy as usual as we were suiting up to dive and there was almost no surf as we entered the water and swam out to the dive site.
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