Thirst for Knowledge
Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 7:47PM 
Not long after taking the photo of Mt. Baldy from the patio area at work, I had to take a trip up to one of our new radio sites (still under construction) called Blue Mountain. I thought it would be another good photo-op and as we took the steep muddy road up the mountain; I saw the clouds. I thought about just how long I had been waiting for a day that didn't have a straight blue sky. It was perfect. A pure blue sky makes any photo uninteresting and it creates issues when using the HDR technique, so clouds are a welcome break from the norm of Southern California.
One of the things that has come out of taking photographs, publishing them on a website and adding some notes about them has been the things that I have learned about the areas and places I have lived, worked in and visited. I have always had a thirst for knowledge (especially useless information, which my head is full of) and I just love to learn. So, by doing something as simple as taking a photo I have learned some amazing things. For example, take the photograph above; in the foreground is the Colton cement plant and the cement pile that you see is all that is left of Mount Slover. Cement began to be extracted from the mountain in 1894 and is still being extracted today. Of course there is not a lot left of Mount Slover anymore. I used to drive past Mount Slover everyday (before even knowing its name or history) and never paid any attention to it but I did always wondered how big the hill used to be before they started extracting cement. Mt. Slover has been flying the Colton Liberty Flag (an American flag) continuously since July 4th 1917, to mark the entry of the USA into WWI. It was one of only three locations in the USA permitted to fly the flag at night.
So, I now have some more useless information in my head and now that you have read this, you have some too! You just never know what you'll learn until you look.
Reader Comments (1)
I like this one