Posts Tagged ‘national monuments’
Posted on March 26, 2020, 7:46 pm, by QT Luong, under
Uncategorized.
Summary: An account of a road trip in the desert at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, and some thoughts on public lands and national parks as places for self-isolation. All images are from the Table Top Wilderness I visited during this trip. The Plan I had planned the Sonoran Desert trip for a year. […]
Posted on March 8, 2020, 4:34 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
From a photographic point of view, a shallow depression in the ground didn’t seem too promising, but since from a geological point of view, Kilbourne Hole is one of the most unique and little-known natural features of the Southwest, I nevertheless decided to spend half a day checking it out, part of my explorations of […]
Posted on February 13, 2020, 11:35 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
National parks often consist of mountains. This isn’t surprising since mountains are the most spectacular landforms and the elevation range that they span lends itself to biodiversity. New Mexico’s two national parks, however, do not comprise significant mountains. Carlsbad Caverns National Park is known for its underground wonders. While surrounded by mountains, White Sands National […]
Posted on January 16, 2020, 11:37 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Many of the large national monuments I have written about during the last two years have one thing in common: they are quite undeveloped. By contrast, although it was proclaimed in 2013, Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument near Taos, New Mexico, already sports facilities close to those found at a national park: visitor centers, […]
Posted on January 8, 2020, 12:10 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon have the most famous massive multi-room Ancestral Puebloan ruins in the Southwest. However, when it comes to smaller structures, in addition to harboring the highest concentration of them anywhere, Bears Ears National Monument’s Cedar Mesa area is home to possibly the two most iconic of them: House of Fire and […]
Posted on December 19, 2019, 6:00 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
If you thought the reduction in size of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument was bad, wait until you look at Bears Ears National Monument, which lost even more protections that same day of December 4, 2017. See some of the vast landscapes to be exclused from the monument. The proclamation of Bears Ears National Monument […]
Posted on December 13, 2019, 12:40 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Grand Staircase Escalante is arguably the crown jewel of national monuments, however, the Trump administration wants to reduce it to half its size. Follow me on a tour of six of the most remarkable areas of the monument to lose their protection. When designated in 1996, Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, stretching over 2938 square […]
Posted on October 21, 2019, 11:55 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
A decade ago, I inspected the Maine North Woods as it became the focus of Roxane Quimby’s quest for a new national park. As anticipated in my Maine North Woods travel report, opposition to this grand vision was widespread enough that Quimby changed her goals to a national monument instead, which does not require congressional […]
Posted on October 8, 2019, 8:10 pm, by QT Luong, under
Techniques.
Although paved, the Keno Access Road, in the northeast corner extension of Cascade Siskiyou National Monument was so remote that I hardly saw any other car on it. This made it possible to drive slowly enough to look for photographs, a normally hazardous proposition for the solo driver. One of the advantages of going on […]
Posted on September 23, 2019, 3:45 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Most travelers identify Cascade Siskiyou National Monument with Pilot Rock, whose distinctive profile can be seen from both directions of I-5 between Oregon and California. In this article, I describe four other favorite locations in the monument and discuss some of the photographs I made there. Except for the last one, all of them require […]
