Rider on usine the Pony Express Trail: Volume 1, 2015-2016, Sacramento, California

After surviving great losses this is how one woman found her way to live usine a passionate life with her camera and Rider on the Pony Express Trail.

It started out as a simple question: "How many stations are still standing today along the famous Central Overland Pony Express Trail?" It turned into a quest that closely resembles a treasure hunt, time and time again!

As a Western Lifestyle photographer, Carla was excited to try to find the answers to that question and record what she found in photographs of the famous trail.

This behind-the-scenes Journal is a record of her journey as she worked on that project. She found much more to see and experience while hunting for those treasures than she had ever imagined:



- In California: historical towns, boarding houses, a reassembled Wells Fargo building, and the beautiful Sierra mountains with their rivers and tall pines.



- In Nevada: historical mining towns, forgotten cemeteries, Native American petroglyphs, miles of two-track roads leading to rock ruins, historic forts left to decay in the desert, a castle, and a ride on a steam engine train.



- In Utah: log cabins, a rock fort, beautiful marshes, a dog cemetery, simple dugouts and monuments on sidewalks in the middle of a big city.

During the authors travels to and fro, again and again, between Sacramento, California, and Salt Lake City, Utah, she collected so much information and so many photographs that she had to pause to assemble it all...with hopes to later continue following the rest of the trail to St. Joseph, Missouri.

Hop in and ride shotgun in spirit with Carla and her canine companion, Rider, as they share their day to day RV adventures, trials and triumphs, the people they meet on the trail, the view of the roads leading to their destinations and, of course, photos of those American treasures, the Pony Express Stations!

Carla, born a Texan, transplanted to California, continues to love the western way of life, no matter where she hangs her hat. Her grandfather sparked her love for ranching and being horse back early on, from visits to his cattle operation. She owned her first pony before the age of five, and soon fell in love with Roy Rogers, Dale Evans and Gabby Hayes on the silver screen. Today she keeps these passions alive traveling with her canine companion (Australian Cattle Dog), Rider, in their 5th wheel. Her college education is versified; photography, colt training, agriculture, civil engineering and architecture. You may find Carla in the pew at Church; studying in a local museum; clicking away with her camera in an old ghost town, or a pony express station, or while in the saddle at a ranch branding. When she finally stops to edit and write she parks the RV near her family in Northern California and Western Nevada.