Category Archives: personal

Beowawe

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Places that you may never have heard of

I’ve made countless cross country trips by car usually traveling our Interstate Highway system. When I pass by a “strange” name, I’ll jot the name down and do some research on the place when I return home.

One of these places is Beowawe.

Bewawe is located in eastern Nevada a few miles south of Interstate 80.

Some say that its name is derived from the Paiute language  who inhabited the area and means gate. But there are several other interesting and humorous tales about the origin of the town’s name which you can read here.

In the late 1800s, nearby mining operations sent the ore to Beowawe for shipment by rail. The railroad also brought supplies for the ranching operations. For decades it remained a small town to support the nearby ranching industry.

During the 1940s and 1950s several visits by the USGS to examine the hot springs and geysers in the Whirlwind Valley area where Beowawe is located. Researcher Nell Murbarger discovered that this “remote pocket in the mountains of north central Nevada with a colorful terrace and boiling pools provide an amazing spectacle for the few people who venture over the treacherous road that leads to this spot.”

Geyser Field in Whirlwind Valley, Bewawe – Photo Credit: Oleh Melnyk, 1978

In the late 1950s tests were conducted to determine if these natural hydrothermal features were capable of generating electrical power. Consequently a plant was built to capture the hot water and steam. Unfortunately the geysers of Whirlwind Valley disappeared with the plant’s construction.

BeowaweGeothermalNV
Photo Credit: “Plazak, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Resources: Murbarger, Nell, “Geysers of Whirlwind Valley” Desert Magazine, January 1956, Vol. 18, Issue 1. 
To visit Beowawe take exit 261 off of I-80 and drive a few miles south.

Still Interested?

Here are a few more places that you may never have heard of –

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

Road Trip

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Loving Fall Travel

We’ve found that early fall is a good time for a vacation. Most of the summer road repair is completed, the places that we’ll visit are less crowded, gasoline prices have come down and lodging is less expensive. So it’s off we go.

We decided to skip the camping this year and instead enjoy the comfortable hotel beds at the stops along our planned itinerary. This trip is probably a 5000 mile journey, but I like driving and my wife Kris doesn’t mind filling in once in a while. She has plenty of books to read during the long hours in the car.

From our home in Grand Rapids we start with a long initial drive to Salt Lake City to visit our grandson in college. Next across the sparsely populated central Nevada to Mammoth Lakes and Yosemite to view its sweet valley and giant sequoias. It’s a short hop to Reno for a few days stay with family. Then it’s through the mountainous forest of Idaho and Montana to do some hiking in gorgeous Glacier. We’ll head south to northern Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley and then traverse the torturous Beartooth Hwy before the snow falls. Finally traveling east again we’ll hit Badlands and then head home again through South Dakota.

The car is filled with snacks and drinks for the long hours on the road. And as always I have my photo equipment ready to travel.

We’re going to place a few stickers on our car from our sister company StickItToYourCar.com

We’ll have some new photos from our travels here when we return.

A New York City Visit

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<br /> New York Visit<br />

Granddaughter’s First time in New York


While I’ve lived in Michigan since 1972, I still consider myself a New Yorker. I grew up just outside of the city in nearby Westchester County where I spent my formative years learning and enjoying the exhilarating pulse of the Big Apple.

One of our granddaughters wanted to travel to New York to see the sites that she’s heard about from her family for so many years.



We drove from Grand Rapids to the New York area about 750 miles. Here we are on the Ohio Turnpike about half way to our destination.


We’re crossing Hudson River over the Mario Cuomo Memorial Bridge where we will take up residence for a few days in Tarrytown, NY.

 

Tarrytown is a small village north of NYC along the Hudson River. Historically it’s famous as the setting for Washington Irving’s story about the headless horseman in “the Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. As a teenager I spent time exploring the cemetery in Sleepy Hollow.



We took a short drive from our hotel to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.


The cemetery is filled with many interesting gravestones. Some of them date back to the 1600s.

 

The following day we took the commuter train from Tarrytown to New York City. The ride to the city takes about an hour with stops at towns in Westchester county and the Bronx with familiar names – Irvington, Dobbs Ferry, Hastings-on-Hudson, Glenwood, Yonkers, Riverdale, Spuyten Duyvill, University Heights, Yankee Stadium – before the final stop at Grand Central Station.



Here we are after getting off the train from Tarrytown. This is the iconic Grand Central Station.


We walked out to the street and found a bite to eat from one of the food vendors.

 

The walk from Grand Central to Central Park takes us through mid-town Manhattan. During the day the streets are filled with workers, pedestrians and visitors. It’s takes about 30 minutes to walk the mile to the park.


This is a popular section of Central Park known as Bethesda Terrace.

Here we have two locals having a chess match in Central Park

 


Across ftom Central Park is the Time Warner Building with its impressive window that looks out over Columbus Circle.

Walking a short distance south let us view the golden statue that adorns Rockefeller Center.

 

A cab ride to westside Manhattan took us to Hudson Yards.


Edge Building at Hudson Yard district

We enjoyed a fantastic dinner in the newer Hudson Yard district. This area is close to train yards and was recently redeveloped for residential, office and commercial use.

Afterwards we hopped on the subway to Grand Central and then the commuter train back to Tarrytown.

 
 

The next day we wanted to take in some culture. So it was a car ride into NYC to visit the MET – Metropolitan Museum of Art – which is adjacent to Central Park.


We drove to the city to visit to the MET – the well-known Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Here we see a wall sized artwork on Washington and soldiers crossing the Delaware.

 

One last visit before the long drive back to Michigan. We wanted to visit New Rochelle , the city where I grew up.


This is the house in New Rochelle where we lived for many years. We wanted to see how much it has changed since we lived there.

So then we’re on our way home with this sticker on the car.

 

It was a short visit to New York but our granddaughter finally was able to see some of the sites that we have told her about over the years.

Written by:

Arnie Lee