An American Songline

Journeys in Vintage Music with Cecelia Otto

Lincoln Highway

West Tour of LHA 2011 conference in pictures

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Hello all:

It’s been a long but exhilarating day (14+ hours). I will write more about the day post conference, but in the meantime here are some photo highlights of today (I had over 200 pictures to choose from).

This is the view from the old Echo Pass Summit.
The LH was based off of many trails, including the Pony Express.
Old Tollbooth from the circa the gold rush days.
Clarksville is a ghost town where original LH roads still exist. Thanks to a local Model A association, we were able to go back in time and drive these roads in cars from the period. My car was from 1927.
Traffic Jam-1914 style. The original roads were 14 feet across in most places, so you had to

pass carefully.

A closeup of the original 1914 pavement. It is believed that Folsom Prisoners built these roads in Northern CA.
Abandoned house in ghost town of Clarksville, CA. A Bee Keeper still lives in the entire town and acts as a watchman to keep trespassers out. A developer has bought the whole town, and the hope is to rebuild it when the economy improves.
The boat we were on was the “Tahoe Queen”, an old Paddlewheel boat.
We took a cruise on Lake Tahoe to Emerald Bay. This view is looking from the bay back to the lake at sunset. What a way to start the first day of summer!

Tomorrow we go East into Nevada; there are more photos to come, so stay tuned!

Continental “Divide”

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Greetings from sunny South Lake Tahoe on the first day of the Lincoln Highway 2011 Conference! While it there were a couple bumps getting here, I am here, and so glad to be here. If you haven’t been to Lake Tahoe ever, you must put it on your bucket list. It is truly one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in this world.

The weather in-flight was quite good once we hit the badlands in South Dakota. As we got closer to Wyoming my heart started to beat a little faster. I would see mountains again soon.  I watched the Bighorn mountain range come into view, and I let out a huge sigh. The clouds and the mountain snow blurring into one another at times, it was a sight I didn’t think I would see in late June!

We passed over the continental divide, and another level of “zen” came over me. In my previous years living out west, I always felt a unique peace in and around the divide. It’s always a “Kodak moment” around the divide. What I mean by “Kodak Moment” is that time stops and you want to capture all five senses of that moment.

Time stopped on the plane as we passed over the divide as I thought it would, and I reflected and reveled in that moment.  I didn’t feel “divided”-I felt united and whole.  All of the good and bad of me and my life sat next to me on the plane in that moment, and it was beautiful.

In the short time I’ve been here with people from the conference tonight, the Lincoln Highway represents so many things to the 100+ people present, but all of these people still manage to come together to celebrate a different part of the road. It’s clear this road has some spiritual meaning to many veteran conference goers, and I look forward to seeing how many on this trip moments “stop time” for me and for others in the next week.

View from hotel at the LHA Conference
View from my hotel room. With a view like this, I could blog every day!