Category: Spring 2023 trip
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Zion Canyon
First established in 1909 as Mukuntuweap National Monument, the Monument was renamed Zion in 1909 by the Acting Director of the newly established National Park Service due to concerns that the original Native American name would deter visitors who might have difficulty pronouncing its name. Zion National Monument became a National Park on November 19,…
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Oh, no…
I thought I would write a little about how we visually document the things we see as we travel. I will get to what happened in the feature image above shortly. In photography “the best camera you have is the one you have with you.” And for most of us, that is our iPhones or…
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Arches and Canyons
We arrived in Utah on the thirty-second day of our travels; a first visit to the state for us both. We had a five-night stay planned in Moab, because we wanted to visit both Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. A visit to Arches requires some advanced planning as from April 1 to October 31, the…
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Mesa Verde National Park
Established by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, Mesa Verde National Park encompasses over 52,000 acres near the Four Corners region. Designated as an UNESCO World Heritage Site, it preserves more than 600 cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Pueblo people. The first people settled in Mesa Verde in AD 550. Their homes were “pit houses“, sunken rooms with…
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A Remarkable Aspen Grove
On the way from Moab to Springdale, Utah (Arches to Zion) we took a detour to visit one of the world’s oldest and most massive living organisms: The Pando Aspen Clone. Located in the Fremont River Ranger District of the Fishlake National Forest, the Pando is a single clonal organism consisting of an estimated 50,000…
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Chillin’ in Hatch, NM
In 2013, we were driving from Tucson, AZ to Santa Fe, NM when we saw a large red chile on a sign. As we recall, the chile was approximately 30 feet tall. We didn’t have time to stop and investigate on that trip but we resolved to return one day. That day arrived on Saturday,…
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Three Rivers Petroglyph Site
Seventeen miles north of Tularosa, New Mexico is a large petroglyph site managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Petroglyphs, or rock-art carvings, were made by prehistoric Native Americans. Three Rivers boasts a collection of more than 21,000 petroglyphs. Three Rivers is one of the largest petroglyph sites in the Southwest that provides visitors…
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Great Views, Sand and Pistachios
Oliver Lee Memorial State Park is a New Mexico state park located at the foot of the Sacramento Mountains. The park is 4,400 feet above sea level. The Sacramento Mountains, which border the park and show in the background of the photo below, reach an elevation of 6,700 feet. This shot was taken from the…
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Deep Under the Chihuahuan Desert
The Carlsbad Caverns is located 754 feet below the surface of the desert. Discovered by Jim White in 1882, the limestone cave was formed not by water erosion but by sulfuric acid corrosion. Deep below the limestone cavern are petroleum reserves. As hydrogen sulfide seeped up through the earth it reacted with dissolved oxygen in…
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The Salt Lick
Located in Driftwood, Texas just 22 miles from Austin, is the largest BBQ restaurant we have ever visited. It is also our favorite. We have visited each time we were in the area. The Salt Lick was established in 1967 and serves thousands of people a week. On a weekend, its enormous parking lot (see…