A very Halloweeny start to Fall in Nevada City.

I know it's still over a month away, but for us, we are already in the spirit and ready for
the best holiday of the year.  This weekend we made an executive decision to get outta
town again and stay outside to enjoy the new crisp fall weather.  Only an hour and half
away is Nevada City, CA, a quaint mountain town on the western side of the Sierras. 
We slept in on Saturday and then threw the camping gear, the cooler and the dog into
the VX and headed out.
 We got to Nevada City about 1:00pm, and found a nice spot for lunch where we could
sit outside with CeCe and eat.  I had a nice root beer and a really good Hefeweizen that
I have never heard of and now can't remember the name.  The weather was perfect. 
I truly believe there is a link to weather and mood.




After lunch we walked around the town a little to look at some of the neat old
houses and buildings.


As usual, we found outselves pulled into the local cemetery.  The Nevada City
cemetery is much like a lot of the old cemeteries we have seen near the other
mining towns of Nevada and California, but yet different in its own way.


For one, this cemetery is up in the mountains with the trees, unlike most of the
high desert cemeteries we have visitied before.



For two, this cemetery had a lot of wooden headstones, and simple wooden
crosses scattered everywhere. This is certainly one of the most Halloweeny places
I have been out west, and it get's better...


Strange little shrine.  See the first photo in this post for a close up of the little
message left on the tree.


So after we finished the afternoon photoshoot at the cemetery, we walked around
a little more.  This is when we met Jasper in an alley.  He was a very friendly kitty
with ice blue eyes.


A rooster.




So now it was about 5:30 and we decided we needed to find a campsite.  So we
headed out east of the town again and settled at the White Cloud campsite.  It wasn't
the greatest campsite, but it worked out ok.


Once the tent was setup, we had a couple drinks and waited until we were hungry enough to go back into
town and find some dinner.  We ate at a decent place (the lunch spot was much, much better) called Lefty's
and then wandered around a little more. The night was still young and I wasn't quite ready to head back to
the tent, so we parked and entered the cemetery once again with the tripod, cable release and the flash.
CeCe was pretty spent so she stayed in the VX to rest.  Now,  half of the cemetery (the newer part) is fenced
in and slightly illuminated by a single street lamp.  The other side (the Halloweeny part) is not lit at all.  It's
basically completely dark, so I brought along my little headlamp.  We found a nice looking grave to start
on so I setup the tripod and camera.  Linda was standing just behind me.  Suddenly, as I was crouched
down fiddling with the camera settings, Linda shrieked and almost shit her pants as something grabbed her
leg in the darkness.  My first thought was that it must be a zombie hand reaching out from the neitherworld
that grabbed her, but my headlamp quickly revealed that the creature of the night was nothing more than
another friendly cat.  Needless to say, it was really funny.  So, for the next hour or so we took photos with a
local graveyard kitty Linda dubbed 'Hestia'.  The following photos are the result of a team effort between me
and   and our first real attempt at this type of night photography.





This is my favorite shot of the night.  I scooped up Hestia and stuck her on top of this
headstone.  It took a few tries, but eventually we got it.  MONEY.


Here is my first attempt at Photoshop "stacking".  This is actually two different
photos stacked together.


A close up of the amazing gothic iron work.





I'm addicted to this night stuff now.  I must do more...