April 6, 2022
by David Ryan
2 Comments

Wandering to the Trinity Site

With three UNESCO recognized World Heritage Sites and with a countless number of stunning landscapes that you will be hard pressed to find anywhere else in the country, if not the world, New Mexico has to be at or near the top of the list of states with the largest number of visually stimulating “Gold Star” attractions. (Only California has as many World Heritage Sites as New Mexico.) But of New Mexico’s many Gold Star sites, the Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was exploded, may have the most impact!

The Trinity Site, located in the heart of White Sands Missile Range, is open for visitation only two times a year. Traditionally this has been on the first Saturdays of April and October. For 2022, the October visitation date will be the third Saturday of the month – October 15th. Before planning a trip to Trinity, it might be worthwhile to check the official White Sands Missile Range website to make sure that the dates have not changed. Continue Reading →

March 9, 2022
by David Ryan
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Checking Out Dinosaur Tracks and Oklahoma’s High Point While Wandering Through the Epicenter of the “Dust Bowl”

Last week my little dog Sparky and I headed out to the High Plaines in the northeast corner of New Mexico to check out some dinosaur tracks and then continue across the border to Oklahoma’s highest point at Bleck Mesa.

The unending grasslands of the High Plaines are both haunting and beautiful at the same time.

This very area (the northeast corner of New Mexico and the western Oklahoma Panhandle) was the epicenter of the “Dust Bowl” in the 1930s. What had been, prior to European settlement, an unending High Plaines of semi-arid grassland best suited for buffalo was turned into farmland when homesteaders poured into the region in the early part of the last century. (This was one of the last areas in the country to be homesteaded.) The new arrivals were certain that “rain would follow the plow” and went ahead to plow up the grassland. Unfortunately, after a few good rain years in the late teens and twenties, the rains stopped and the now plowed-up grassland turned into dust and catastrophic devastation during the 1930s. Continue Reading →

January 16, 2022
by David Ryan
5 Comments

Checking Out the Blythe Intaglios

If you’ve been reading these blog posts for a while, you know that there are many places, such as Serpent Mound in Ohio, World War II-era bomb targets, or 1930s-era Airway Navigation Beacons and Arrows, that are best viewed from the air!

Serpent Mound from Google Earth

Serpent Mound from the ground. The serpent is over 1300 feet long and is one of the most spectacular places to visit in the country.

Those circular lines are a bomb target from World War II. This one is about 30 miles west of Albuquerque.

This concrete arrow from around 1930 helped airmail pilots navigate across the country. This one is near Rodeo, New Mexico.

To make it easier to find posts in this blog that feature places best viewed from the air, I have added a new topic category to this blog called – From the Air. Just click on that category and you’ll pull up blog posts related to those places.

A place that has not been covered in this blog, and one that is best viewed from the air, is the lower Colorado River valley on the border of California and Arizona. The lower Colorado River valley has the only known collection of Intaglios in the country! Intaglios, oftentimes referred to as Geoglyphs, are etchings carved or scraped into the ground. The most famous intaglios in the world are the Nazca Lines in Peru.

To correct this oversight, my wife Claudia and I drove to Blythe, California with the dogs to start the new year off by checking out the Blythe Intaglios. Blythe is located where Interstate 10 crosses the Colorado River. And the Blythe Intaglios are finest concentration of intaglios in the lower Colorado River valley.

These are two of the intaglios located north of Blythe, California.

Continue Reading →