Abandoned Trailer, Red Desert, Wyoming
I recently spent a weekend in the Red Desert between Superior, Wyoming, a historic coal mining town, and the Jim Bridger Power Plant, a not-so-historic coal burning power plant, both just north of Interstate 80 not too far from Rock Springs. Ed Sherline and I wandered around with our cameras looking for human detritus and Red Desert landscapes with a preference for the former. One of my favorite piles of abandoned junk is just north of Jim Bridger, where strip mining machinery has been left to rust beside the road. I'd photographed here before years ago, and it was fun to return to find that new stuff had been added to the pile including an odd yellow pyramid and the sky-blue frame of an enormous steel cube. While we photographed amongst the scrap, we were serenaded by a cacophony of weird sounds from the general vicinity of the power plant but also areas around it -- everything from what sounded like automatic weapon fire to dangerous harmonics, like what you might expect to hear if you could play high tension power lines like guitar strings. The sounds made for an eerie and disconcerting experience in the middle of an otherwise mostly silent desert on a perfect fall day.
Photo info: Nikon D700, 17-35 mm lens at about 19 mm, f16, ISO 200, 1/200 sec.
