Winging It

From Perryville, I headed west along Hwy. 60 deeper into the Ouachita Mountains. It was a warm and muggy summer day, and I had to be careful to not let the camera sit directly in the blast of cold air from the car's air conditioner so that it wouldn't fog up as soon as I got out of the car. I made a few stops, including one at this neat old house near the amusingly-named town of Nimrod.



I wasn't able to find any information about this house online, and I'd love the chance to be able to see what the inside looks like.



Further down the road is the small town of Plainview (with a population around 700 or so). There were a few old buildings there, including one with this mural painted on the side.



South of Plainview is the old Ward's Crossing Bridge over the Fourche LaFave River, which was built in 1905.





I headed further west, towards the small community of Wing. There is a neat old church here - the Wing Community Church. This church was actually the main thing I had wanted to get pictures of out here. The old church is great, but I can't really find much information on it. It was originally built sometime in the late 1800s as a Methodist church.



I wanted to get pictures of star trails over the old church, but I had some time to kill before sunset so I continued driving further west. I went through the small town of Bluffton, which had a good number of old buildings. One of the most prominent is the old Masonic Lodge, which is boarded up and covered with faded and peeling paint.



Nearby is what I'm guessing was an old gas station, which doesn't look like it's served customers in awhile. But there was a sign there advertising that high speed internet is available.



And the old gas pumps at the station, which were nearly hidden behind overgrown vegetation.



Across the street was another abandoned building, which looked like it was once a store. This is the view of the back, with the windows reflecting the golden evening light.



The light was perfect, and I hurried to try to find some more old buildings to try to get some pictures of. I pulled over and stood in tall grass (luckily no ticks or chiggers were lurking there) and got a few shots of this old barn.



I drove by this old house and pulled over for a few pictures. It actually looks like a new house is being built just behind it, which means that the old house will probably be torn down soon.



There was actually a good number of old abandoned homes in this area, and I tried to stop at as many of them as I could.



And one more, with the broken front window of the house reflecting the last light from the sunset.



I hurried back to Wing and went to set up the camera in front of the old Community Church. I realized that star trail pictures might be a bit tricky, thanks to the combination of lights that were shining on the old church and causing some funky shadows. Also some of the lights were sodium vapor lights, which cast a bit of an odd yellow-orange tint on the trees around the church. So I did some light-painting with a flashlight on the church in the hopes it would help mask some of the harsh light and shadows hitting the church.

The camera took over 200 :30 second exposures out there. I sat in the car during that two hours, thankful that I could at least listen to the FC Dallas gave over the satellite radio (the game ended in a 1-1 tie). This is the combination of all of those shots, which revealed these star trails stretching across the sky above the old church.