Over Father’s Day weekend I camped at the 9,000-foot Hospital Flats campground atop Mt. Graham in eastern Arizona with my younger daughter. I took the photos in color, but as I began to optimize them for their galleries, I realized they are just as intriguing in black-and-white. So I’ve created two galleries, one each in [...]

Continuing our journey, after Aztec Ruins National Monument we spent the night in Flagstaff, Arizona. The next morning, we made the loop through the sister monuments of Sunset Crater Volcano and Wupatki Ruins, then on to the Grand Canyon. Photos from the third and final leg are now available. Below are ten of my favorites, [...]

Over spring break, my daughters and I took a road trip from Tucson to Denver and back, putting 2,700 miles on the Honda Fit and visiting seven national parks and monuments (and many great friends) along the way. Photos and narratives from the first leg of the trip — Tucson to Great Sand Dunes National [...]

This weekend we joined two other Civano families for a weekend in and around Elgin, Arizona, about fifty miles southeast of Tucson in high Chihuahuan desert grasslands (now mostly rangeland, though still beautiful). Below are a few photos from the trip, but be sure to see these and many others in larger format in the [...]

I’ve always been intrigued by light pollution, those cool global maps showing artificial light on Earth, from space. So for this week’s The Next American City blog entry, that’s just what I wrote about: http://americancity.org/updates/blog/2008/dark-skies-bright-future/ Dark skies are on my mind because in the next few weeks I hope a) to travel a bit farther [...]

About halfway between Benson and Willcox in southeastern Arizona is Texas Canyon, a boulder-strewn swath of cartoon wonderland straight out of Warner Bros. Roadrunner & Coyote shows. This afternoon my daughters and I traveled with neighbors Scott and Deirdre Calhoun to explore this very cool place. Here are some photos, and there are 49 more [...]

Three families and their gaggle of girls ventured out to Apple Annie’s orchards and vegetable patches near Willcox, in southern Arizona, today. And we lived to tell the tale. A few photos here, plenty more at the gallery: Still sunny on the high desert, but getting cooler. Making their way through one of many pumpkin [...]

I just realized I may be off by a day on my road trip count, that perhaps this is actually day 13. Ah well, math was never one of my better subjects. Today we made it back to Tucson! The girls were very excited, especially since the mobile DVD dual-screen player broke on the way [...]

A pleasant 730-mile drive from Tucson to Amarillo today. Not many stops—for photos, anyway—but snapped a few here and there: For example, here’s dad, in his infamous “Republicans for Voldemort” t-shirt. At least once today someone asked me who Voldemort is…. My wife Billie doesn’t much like it when I drive and take photos at [...]

The Organ Mountains of south-central New Mexico rise like a granite-ridged hogback, glowing to near scarlet on a cool March evening. With my younger daughter, I cut through the Chihuahuan scrub that masses into a tangled poetry of desert plants at the mountains’ base: ground-dwelling yucca, creosote, cane cholla, prickly pear, sand verbena, lupine, white-thorn [...]