Vagabond Photography

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A Breath of Fresh Air

I used to live in Las Vegas, Nevada. The temperature in this world-famous "sin city" typically reaches over 100 degrees (37 Celsius), in the Summer. The heat would settle over the city and never let up, even at night. I don't miss living in an air fryer.

I moved to Reno, Nevada a few years back. It's a smaller, lesser known city. The population of the Reno area is currently around a half million, compared to about 2.3 million people in Las Vegas.

The "biggest little city" sits in the northern part of the state and usually remains about 20 degrees cooler than Las Vegas, year-round. Unlike Las Vegas, the Reno area largely cools down every night.

A large part of the cooling effect comes from the Washoe Zephyr. It's a seasonal wind that typically occurs in the summertime in this area. As the sun sets over the Sierra Nevada a pressure system forms, forcing a considerable amount of wind to occur, pushing the hot air out of the valley and providing a cooling effect.

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Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

In this post, we travel to one of the darkest places in the United States. The Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park, in Nye County, Nevada.

Only one-in-five North Americans see the Milky Way, at night. 99% of Americans experience light pollution. In 1879 the light bulb was invented. Since it's inception and mass adoption we've blinded ourselves from our perception of the night sky.

On a new moon, far away from the nearest city, you can catch some extremely dark skies which afford the opportunity to glimpse the Milky Way with the naked eye and reconnect with our ancestors perspective.

Silver was discovered in the area in 1869. By 1896 the Berlin Mine was established and the town of Berlin built around it. Berlin was soon in its heyday until 1908, declining to its death by 1911.

With the rise of Berlin the old settlement of Union, a mile to the east, revived as its old buildings were used by the Berlin miners. During its heyday, Berlin and its Union suburbs supported 200-250 people including miners, woodcutters, charcoal makers, a doctor and nurse, a forest ranger and a prostitute.

In 1928 a large bed of Ichthyosaur fossils was discovered nearby. Excavations at the site thirty years later would reveal the remains of 37 Ichthyosaurs from the Triassic age.

The Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park was established in 1957 to protect and display North America's most abundant concentration and largest known Ichthyosaur fossils at the time, as well as the mining town of Berlin.

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A New Dawn

I've decided to start documenting my journeys, posting them to a Tumblr page.

In this post we feature a time-lapse sunrise over Walker Lake, just outside of the small town of Hawthorne Nevada, population ~2700. Walker Lake is managed by the BLM. The south shore of the lake has unexploded ordnance and Hawthorne Army Depot, which has the distinct honor of being the worlds largest munitions depot.

Stay tuned. More time-lapse videos and photos from my travels are to come.