Friday, July 10, 2015

Christmas Tree Park at Yellowstone [1910] and More

From our collection of old postcards ...


Christmas Tree Park
Yellowstone National Park
As it appeared in about 1910
Essentially this is the West Entrance to YNP

Back of the card

Description on back enlarged.

(Roughly) How the same spot looks today
as shown on Google Maps Steetview.
This view is just after leaving the western entance gate.
It has been excessively warm here in the Emerald City over the last week. We've broken several heat records. This caused us to look for a cooling thought in the old card collection. Ahhh ... Christmas Tree Park in YNP. If you've been there, you know the name is well deserved. Today, the road is paved and quite a bit wider, but otherwise you'll see about the same thing as the early tourists did in the early 1900s as they entered the Park in stagecoaches. In the old postcard view you can almost make out the stagecoach ruts.

Neighborhood Update


On July 4th the Hyundai Global container ship pulled up and anchored right in front of us. Well, we may be speaking a little bit loosely on that, but really, it was straight out the window. Here are a couple of our pics of the Global ...

Hyundai Global Container Ship
Home Port:  London




The ship was on its way out of Puget Sound and anchored for only a couple of hours. We were curious about why, but don't have any answers. The first picture belies the size of the ship. Consider that you may have seen just one of those containers being pulled along by a truck on the freeway right next to your car and you get an idea of the size. We put our spotting scope on the Global and were impressed with just the size of the anchor cable. Wish we could have gotten a photo for you but here is one from the web that gives a good idea of the size of the individual links in the chain ...

Just one link weighs about 500 pounds.

By the way, when we were researching anchor chain on the web we happened to find an interesting video. Have you ever seen a container ship being run into the ground on purpose?  Take a look ...


The short story on the grounding ... The main engine had failed and they lost reliable control of where the ship was headed, so to prevent collisions with other ships in the crowded channel, the authorities and the Captain decided to ground her. (Full story is in the video's description on YouTube. The video was posted by Corinne Vigniel.)


Color on our walk

The next three photos are all taken in a spot that many might classify as "weeds".

First, the pod ... about to bloom

On the same plant, a bloom just opened

Another shot of the red red wild rose
we featured a couple of posts ago.

Skies


Wildfires in the dry forests are sending smoke to the skies around the Pacific Northwest including the city of Seattle. Here is how the sky looked about 30 minutes before sunset on July 7th ...



Thank you for stopping by John's Island.

17 comments:

  1. I love Yellowstone Nat'l Park, great postcard! The ship looks huge and the containers looks so colorful! Your lilies are beautiful and the sky shot is lovely. I hope the wildfires are under control. Happy weekend!

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  2. Christmas Tree Park! Love, love, LOVE that!

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  3. The park looked amazing back in the day and the shipping container facts are impressive x

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  4. Even though you're not posting as often, I look forward to seeing your latest post show up in my feed, John. This was as usual very interesting. That container ship is huge. I've been to Yellowstone through that entrance. It is a beautiful place and I'm glad you can show me what it looked like a century ago. :-)

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  5. i hate to see those smoky skies from the nw and canada. :( lovely blooms of color. those are HUGE ships! and chains!

    i like the size of those christmas trees. :)

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  6. John, such a lovely array of photos today! That container ship....how in the world does it float with all those containers on it?

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  7. These are great photos. I was reading your section in the margin - vintage memorabilia, most of it about the Pacific Northwest. Do you have any material about Sacramento in the 1910s?

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  8. Terrific captures they are indeed, John!! I really enjoyed these -- as always!! That container ship is amazing indeed!! Hope you have a wonderful weekend! Enjoy!!

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  9. The ship? The railway hauls mile long trains of flat cars loaded with containers. Sometimes piled two high, sometimes two per car, sometimes one per car. So there's a massive amount of goods moved by container. So you look at the ship and wonder how many trainloads it holds.

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  10. Wow that chain is amazing. I've just got to show Ken that later!!
    The container ship is nice and colorful. It being so big it is a wonder that it doesn't sink!!

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  11. Lovely postcard and beautiful photos, John!

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  12. Very interesting: the postcard and Google Streetview. I like that.

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  13. Love that old postcard, back in those times there were some more trees allowed to live than today :)
    I would like to see such a containership and that anchor chain for myself :)
    And the flowers you found in the weeds are very pretty :))

    Have a beautiful weekend John!
    Tinna ✐

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  14. Those postcards look great. And the photos of the Hyundai Ship is out of this world, when taking into consideration the immense size of it and its contents. Those are lovely flowers indeed.
    Thanks for stopping by, much appreciated. Do have a joyful weekend!

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  15. That anchor cable's weight is amazing! Ha, I have to confess all the containers on that ship remind me of giant Rubik's cubes. I especially love the red roses in the photos of the flowers, and Christmas tree park looks like an interesting place to explore.

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  16. A wonderful old postcard, nice the images of the containership and the flowers!

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