Near Barnardsville, Somewhere

panorama near barnardsville
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

This is about the best panoramic stitched shot I've done yet, which isn't, I recognize, saying much. I'm still getting the hang of this stitching thing. Click on it, and then when you get to Flickr, click all sizes to see it in a reasonable version. My brother and I went and got mildly lost outside Barnardsville today. I was looking for Douglas Falls, which I vaguely remembered as being "easily" accessible: you take the Barnardsville exit, follow the road on past where it turns to dirt, go way the hell up the mountain looping along, and then the road ends at a parking area and you hike on down to the waterfall. Nope, that is not true. Either I remembered it totally wrong, which is probable, since it's been around 3 years since I was out there, or they've changed it, which is sadly also possible, since lo and behold, at the way the hell point up the dirt road are a couple of McMansions in various states of construction. At any rate, the dirt road turns back to pavement, and that pavement eventually takes you to, of all places, Burnsville. We tried going up another dirt road - that ended at a locked gate, and then we walked for a bit, although my brother was slightly worried that someone with the key to the gate was going to drive up behind my car, see the hippie stickers and shove my car over the cliff.

I do not get McMansions, hideous things, anywhere but particularly not up there, which is eleventy hundred miles from anywhere. Even with our new, milder (tm) winters, that road has to be impassable from November to March and it's no picnic in July. But what do I know? I'm poor, and I think spending millions on a house is immoral, and building a slew of houses in the middle of nowhere, up on a ridgeline, destroying the ecosystem and spoiling everyone elses view is double immoral. However, in the silver linings department, it was either the development or some logging that took me to the clearing where I shot this picture and, bonus, the clearing was full of wildflowers.

Note: Damn, it's my own stupid fault. I forgot about the turnoff onto Dillingham Road.


don't mind me, I'm tweaking. These lovely things are from my friend taz' site, and I want them as my backgrounds, oh yes I do. In a further design type note, isn't it interesting how the eye reads the one on the left as a hole in the white page, but the one on the right doesn't read like that at all? YMMV, I guess. But that's how I see it. HEY! What do you think about the new design?