Exploring An Abandoned Ghost Town

On a recent trip out West, I gambled on one of those name-your-price deals on a hotel, and it booked me about 30 minutes east of where I wanted to stay. Luckily, it booked me about 10 minutes from a pretty cool little ghost town called Two Guns off of old Route 66. I didn't know anything about it, but my friend Zee (@zee__zzz) told me I should check it out. I wasn't expecting much, so I was pleasantly surprised when we got there. As soon as you pull up, you can see an old abandoned gas station covered in graff, with a couple other buildings and a couple big tanks in the back. This kind of place usually isn't the most interesting to me, but for some reason, I really liked it. Maybe it was just the fact that it was literally in the middle of nowhere or maybe it became more interesting to me after I did a little reading about it. I read that a group of Apaches were murdered by enemy Navajos there when the Navajos set fire to a cave that the Apaches were hiding in. I read that Billy the Kid and his gang hid from law enforcement nearby in Canyon Diablo. I read that a group of train-robbers stashed a bunch of money and gold in the area that may or may not have been recovered. They've even dug up Native American artifacts there that date all the way back to the year 1050. Aside from all the history, it was a pretty cool place to shoot. The gas station was decent looking, but I thought the best part was the KOA campground with pool. There was also another small building in the back, but there wasn't much to it. There really wasn’t much to anything, but I knew immediately that I was going to be returning to shoot the sunset and (attempt) to shoot the Milky Way. The sunset ended up being pretty decent, but the dark night sky out West was really the most amazing thing. We could literally see the Milky Way with our naked eyes as soon as we got out of the car. Even more amazing was that the galaxy was almost exactly where I was hoping it would be for the pictures I wanted. I hardly ever get lucky with stuff like that. I couldn't wait to try out the new Sigma 14mm f/1.8 glass and see if I could pull off my first attempt at astrophotography, and I’m pretty happy with how the pictures turned out. I wouldn’t drive hours to see this place, but I definitely recommend stopping there to anyone that happens to be in the area.