The Monday Morning Report

It was a pretty good weekend--One filled with meeting new people and photography.

It started with me meeting some of Suzie's friends on Friday.  After work we were sitting here and one of our neighbors stopped by. They live right around the corner, but are living with someone else while their house is being redone after a fire.  They just both happened to be there at the same time.  When they stopped by, Suz invited them for dinner and we all enjoyed a pot of leftover stew (it was a big pot!) that we reheated on the wood stove.  Nice people, good visit.

Saturday continued with me meeting new people, but this one was prearranged.  We spent the first part of Saturday getting things in order in the house.  She cooked a pot of one of our favorite soups and had a gathering over for the evening.  Again, nice folks!  We had four adults and two kids, Dane was also there.  He was specifically invited so everyone could celebrate a recent achievement in his church.  It was a great evening.

Yesterday we did something different.  I was surfing around during my coffee and happened across a site with "ghost towns" on it.  I was reading about an interesting one and found that it was right up the highway from us!  Suzie was very interested so we set out with our cameras.

 The "town" of Franklin, Washington was a coal mining town in the late 1800's, but apparently suffered a catastrophic loss in a fire.  There is a great article on it here.  Like most ghost towns, there was very little left.  We found a few foundations here and there:

There were various items strewn about half buried, like steel cable and stuff like that. some mining car tracks, and other stuff.  This section of track was elevated about 30 feet or so to span the gully:

The real cool part though was the cemetery.  The gravestones were all in various stages of disrepair and the path meandered around them among the blackberry vines.  It was kind of surreal to actually compare names on the website list with the ones on the gravestones.

It was a pretty cool to find something like this so close to home.  It was an excellent way to spend a nice day!