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 28, 2019, 12:57 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
On Friday, December 20, 2019, as White Sands National Monument was redesignated White Sands National Park, I was one of the few visitors inside the park. This ensured that I would be the first to photograph all 62 national parks, and possibly the first to make a photograph in White Sands National Park. White Sands […]
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 excluded 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 November 21, 2019, 9:46 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Acadia National Park is made of three units, plus a few smaller islands. Most equate the main unit on Mount Desert Island with Acadia National Park. That is an excellent reason to spend time in the two other units: Schoodic Peninsula and Isle au Haut. Being lesser-known, they will offer you quiet, as well as […]
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
Locations.
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 […]
Posted on September 16, 2019, 12:05 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Our planet is experiencing a mass extinction at a scale unprecedented since the demise of dinosaurs 65 million years ago (UN Report, Center for Biological Diversity). Public lands can act as sanctuaries for biodiversity. In 1947, Everglades National Park was the first large tract of land protected not for its scenic value, but for the […]
Posted on July 28, 2019, 10:12 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Shanghai is China’s most populous and properous city, while Mount Huangshan is China’s most well known national park. As the country is marching towards urbanization and industrialization, traditional villages have largely disappeared or changed during the last century. Located in South Anhui province, Hongcun and Xidi are rare surviving examples of those traditional villages. Designated […]
