Back on Memorial Day the Family and I decided to get up early and hit Mckelligon Canyon and the neighboring Wyler Aerial Tramway in the Franklin Mountains.

Our hike in the Mountain was a short one. We were trying to hit a small cave from the Ron Coleman trail-head and the boys got about halfway and were done!  I continued and took the above pic from atop the cave.  After leaving the canyon we headed over to the Tram to take the easy way up the mountain:

It was a nice morning with hardly any clouds in the sky.  At the top I was able to shoot a few sequenced pictures that I stitched into the following panorama:

click for a larger pic

If you zoom into the Asarco area you can really see how much work they have done in remediating the site.  I exited the the viewing platform to get a few pics of the tram as they came up the mountain:

I’ll warn you, make sure you check in with the ranger at the top if you leave the platform.  They get a little grumpy if you haven’t signed in and are wandering around the trails.  I’m always amazed that the broadcast antenna have weathered our ferocious windstorms as well as they do given their size:

After we looked around for a while it was time to head back down.  The ride is pretty smooth, no doubt in part to the large pully system in use to ferry the cable cars. That brings me to my next painting:

I’m using the pulley system as the inspiration for my next painting.  It’s another smallish painting by my standards, but I think it will serve as a nice contrast to the previous small vehicle paintings.

The full set of pics can be viewed on Flickr here: Memorial Day in the Mountains

I found a postcard scan of El Paso from about 92 or so:

El Paso from about 1992

For comparison here’s a similar shot from 2006:

El Paso from 2006

And here’s from a week ago:

El Paso from 2011

Yeah, I didn’t notice anything different either 🙂 That’s unfortunate because a lot has changed down there.  In that same time we got a couple of new museums, a handful of buildings have been revitalized and the Plaza Theater has been reopened.  The makings of an art scene have begun and there are many new restaurants and clubs that have opened.    To the casual visitor who may only stop at scenic drive for that 4000 foot view, downtown looks exactly the same as it has for years.  You know what though, that may be a bonus to the vendors who have stockpiles of El Paso postcards.