Welcome to my blog/travel guide. Take a look around, you never know what you might find!
All in More...
Possibly the most recognizable icon of the Southwest. These monoliths have been featured everywhere from the Roadrunner cartoon, to Mario Kart, to Forrest Gump. Although these monuments are synonymous with the American desert, the valley is actually a Tribal Park on the Navajo Nation near the border of Arizona and Utah.
As the name implies, this incredible astronomical instrument is a very large array of twenty seven enormous radio antennae scattered across the New Mexico desert, scanning the heavens day and night for faint radio signals.
This extensive 45,000 acres of barren wilderness in New Mexico is just waiting to be explored. There are no trails, or signs, or guides here. The only thing restricting your exploration is a cattle fence and your own ambition.
Just outside of Page, Arizona, the Colorado River doubles back on itself to form a horseshoe-shaped bend, upriver from the Grand Canyon. The river is within the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, but the parking lot is technically within the city limits of Page. If you’re recreating around Lake Powell or taking a tour of Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe bend is a quick and easy side trip.
This massive hole in the ground was created when a meteor struck the Arizona desert 50,000 years ago. The crater’s proximity to the San Francisco Volcanic Field near Flagstaff, Arizona fueled debates for years whether or not this was a volcanic crater or of extraterrestrial origin. Apollo astronauts trained here for possible crater missions on the moon.
New Mexico is the chili capitol of the world, and for two weeks in October, every year Albuquerque becomes the hot air balloon capitol of the world. Hundreds of balloons from around the world in every color and shape imaginable ascend from the fairgrounds in Albuquerque and drift down the Rio Grande valley for as far as the eye can see.
On July 16th, 1945 humanity entered into the era of nuclear warfare. The objective of the Manhattan Project was achieved here, in the remote New Mexican desert, when the world’s first nuclear device was exploded.
This famous home, designed by the legendary Frank Lloyd Wright is one of the most spectacular works of modern architecture in the United States. You would expect a masterpiece like this to be perched on a cliff in California, but this hidden gem is over the river and through the woods of rural southern Pennsylvania.
A series of otherworldly rock spires, some as tall as 140ft. These pinnacles formed on the lakebed when calcium rich springs interacted with minerals in the lake from as long ago as 100,000yrs to as recent as 11,000 years ago. Similar processes are still occurring today in Mono Lake, an incredibly alkaline (the opposite of acidic) lake ~200 miles north of here.
20,000 years ago, the volcano that produced Merriam Crater spewed lava across the Arizona desert and dammed the Little Colorado River more than five miles away. Lava filled the small canyon carved by the little river and forced it to change direction northward before returning, hundreds of feet downstream, and plummeting over the canyon wall.
This monument, located along the old Rt. 66 outside of Amarillo, has become an effigy to the fabled route through the Southwest and the spirit of the American road trip. Ten Cadillacs buried hood first in a field are an art installation and an homage to the evolution of the Cadillac tail fin on car models ranging from 1948-63. A popular tradition to tag (spray paint) something onto the carcasses is a right of passage for travellers of the Mother Road. The paint is inches thick, and gives the car frames a cartoon-like bulbous appearance. Many people leave cans of spray paint for others to use, but please do not leave empty cans of spray paint or trash here. In 1997 the cars were dug up and moved to their current location to escape the expanding city limits of Amarillo.
A natural leak of methane seeping from rock behind a waterfall keeps a flame lit continuously. Located in western New York, within Chestnut Ridge Park, in the town of Orchard Park.
If you’re a fan of inter dimensional wormholes through household appliances, laser harps, or ethereal mammoth skeleton chimes, this is the place for you. Meow Wolf is part art installation, part escape room, and part psychedelic funhouse for the whole family (including adults)
