Farewell to cabins 7 and 8

We got the call we’d been dreading: Steve had sold the land next to Sebago Resort. Worse, demolition of cabins 7 and 8 was to begin within days. Nothing to do but gather the troops, dash to Nisswa, and salvage what we could. Doug bought his “awesome set of tools”, fun was had, and nobody got hurt.

We extracted the hard wood floors in cabin 7. Original 1920s flooring. Pieces up to 21 foot long. Impossible to get anything like that today.

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Below is the interior of cabin 8 with the flooring removed.
Interior of cabin 8 with flooring removed

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Middle Drakensberg – Amphitheater – South Africa

The Drakensberg mountains are about 100 miles  inland from Durban. The range extends about 100 miles, in three distinctive sections: North, Middle, South. If you’ve seen the movie Zulu, you’ve seen this part of the world. Every other  winter, there will be a light dusting of snow that lasts a couple of  days. Many of the bushmen caves are to be found here. The hiking is  tremendous and varied, with dozens of resorts to stay at. This area is  mainly populated by rural Zulus. Each year in late winter, early spring,  they burn the grass. The reason is that this area is very dry. If the  grass were long, it would lay flat and the water would run off. By  burning the grass, the water is held, the land rejuvenates, and the  grass returns.

This is a view of the Middle Drakensberg peaks from below Tugela Falls. Tugela Falls is the 2nd highest waterfall in the world, but is dry in August (when we visited).

I am not 100% certain of this location, but I believe it is close.
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Sebago Resort Dock Late night pano

I did this one many years ago. A crazy pano. A very dark night with no moon (until later). I started around midnight and worked until 5 in the morning. I was testing the technique of leaving the cameras lens wide open for minutes at a time, while I walked around and “painted” the scene with my flash. So literally all the light you see along the shoreline (except for the lights at the top of the bank) was my flase. Thirty of them at least. Towards the end of the night (facing south), the moon came out, so I had different lighting problems. And if you look west, you can see the movement of stars across the sky. Of course this was back in the film days, so I had no idea what I was going to get until I had the film developed days later. Sure was a lot of fun and something I doubt I’ll get to repeat.