Category Archives: personal

Argenta, NV

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Places that you may have never heard of

Friends know that I’m a big fan of traveling and do so frequently by car. Whether I’m visiting relatives who live far away or I’m vacationing at distant places, it’s usually a cross country trek.

Anyone who has traveled on our extensive road system has driven past signs denoting names of places of which they’ve never heard. Those places that especially stick out to me are ones that have colorful names. One of my “hobbies” is to note these names and later (sometimes weeks, sometimes months later) find out more about these places.

Located along Interstate 80 in north central Nevada, one of these places is Argenta, Nevada. This is what I learned.

Argenta is a ghost down in central Nevada. In the mid 1860’s prospectors discovered silver in the area. The town was planning to develop as a shipping center for the nearby mines and in Austin to the south. However, the town of Battle Mountain had stronger ties to the silver industry and by 1871 the entire town moved to Battle Mountain making Argenta effectively a mining ghost town.

Argenta remained vacant until 1930 when barite was discovered nearby. This mine in Argenta Mountain was operated by the Baker Hughes Company until it closed in 2015.

This is one of the Baker Hughes operations alongside a railroad siding and Interstate 80

Well, that’s the short story about Argenta, NV.

Yet curiosity remains high and I hope to report on other interesting names of places that are part of my hobby.

More of my places that you may never have heard of are here

Aragonite, Utah
Beowawe, Nevada
Dunphy, Nevada
Jackpot, Nevada
Mercury, Nevada
Rhyolite, Nevada
Vedauwoo, Wyoming
Wamsutter, Wyoming

Backyard Ice Rink

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A Fun Outdoor Activity

This year winter came a little late to Michigan. The cold weather seemed to wait until mid-January to swoop down upon us. Then suddenly we got a bunch of snow and the temperature dropped.

With the Covid pandemic keeping us close to home, we were looking for an activity that would be fun but safe. My wife came up with the idea to build a small backyard ice rink so that the grandkids could have some outdoor exercise.

After a little thought we decided upon a 20′ x 40′ rink. We made a couple of visits to a nearby hardware store to buy 140 feet of 4″ PVC tubing, a bunch of connectors to keep them attached and a bunch of 2″ x 4″s as a support frame. The hardest part was the hours it took to locate a large plastic sheet (30′ x 50′) to hold the water. After buying all of the supplies we were ready to start.

First we had to clear the snow from the area where we want to build the rink.

Next we carefully laid the plastic sheet down over the PVC frame and then filled it with water.

Hurry up and wait. We had to wait for two days for the temperature to do its trick. That’s how long it took for the water to turn to ice thick enough for us to use.

However before skating we have to smooth the surface using our home-made “zamboni”.

Finally a look at the rink after we smoothed out the ice.
I took the liberty of pretending to practice hockey as I did 50 years ago on a local lake.

The weather has remained cold for February and so the grandkids have been able to use the rink since.

Everyone was definitely tired of being in lockdown. It’s been a boon to getting the grandkids out and about. The skating and hockey has been a very welcome addition to their activities.