Terra Galleria Photography

Posts Tagged ‘photography’

The San Juan Islands: San Juan Island

Part 1 of 3: 1 | 2 | 3 The San Juan Islands, located in the northern reaches of Washington State’s Puget Sound, eighty miles north of Seattle, are a delightful destination. Comprising beautiful scenery of woodlands and shoreline, their atmosphere has remained pastoral and relaxed. This series of posts will describe highlights from the […]

Indiana Dunes National Park: Chicago Tonight, Final Spreads and Thoughts

Chicago Tonight I was honored that WTTW, the Chicago area’s PBS affiliate which is one of the most-watched public television stations in the country, aired a story about my visit to the Indiana Dunes, produced by multiple Emmy-winning Jay Shefsky. The four-minute Chicago Tonight piece, which is very accurate, took about two hours to film […]

Indiana Dunes: National Park Diversity Beyond the Lakeshore

Indiana Dunes National Park ranks a respectable 13th of all the 61 national parks by number of visits (averaged over the decade 2008-2017). Most of those visits last a few hours: to be precise, according to NPS statistics, an average of 3h 15 min – the 8th shortest. Those hours are in general spent at […]

Indiana Dunes National Park: Impressions from the Shore

Congress redesignated Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore as Indiana Dunes National Park, our 61st, on Friday, February 15. I was initially hoping the reach the park before sunset on Monday, but Chicago International Airport and the park are located on opposite sides of Chicago, and I had landed just in time for rush hour. The Shore […]

Longing for the Night in Petrified Forest National Park’s South Wilderness

Unlike all other national parks that are open 24 hours a day, Petrified Forest National Park’s gates close at night, an extraordinary measure necessary to prevent theft of petrified wood – a serious problem. Petrified Forest National Park, despite his sizeable area (146 square miles, 38th largest national park) is also one of a handful […]

Yucca House: the Worst National Monument?

This year, I’ve written about quite a few national monuments. Some of them are larger and, in my opinion, more interesting than some national parks. However, they form a disparate collection with a huge range of resources, and Yucca House National Monument is a case in point. Yucca House was first described in F. V. […]

Canyons of the Ancients National Monument: an Interconnected Cultural Landscape

Of all America’s prehistoric civilizations, none left more visible traces than the Ancestral Puebloan culture, and nowhere else in the country can one find so many of their ancient sites, than at Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. The Anasazi or Ancestral Puebloan culture flourished between AD 300 and 1300 in the Four Corners area. […]

Least-visited in Mesa Verde: a New Angle on Square Tower House

Wetherill Mesa is the quieter side of Mesa Verde National Park, but a few other cliff houses see even less visitation, even though they are some of the most visible structures in the park, like Square Tower House. Find out in this post about the most special tours in the park, which started only in […]

Wetherill Mesa: the Quieter Side of Mesa Verde National Park

Wetherill Mesa, located on the west side of Mesa Verde National Park, is a long and narrow peninsula of land rising above deep canyons. Its rock alcoves are home to structures as impressive as those found on Chapin Mesa, however the experience of visiting is quite different. Many visitors rush through the landscape of the […]

Photographing Oak Flat and Warner Point Trails in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

A few weeks ago, when I drove out of Montrose, Colorado, on the way to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, a sign warned of winter conditions. I wondered what that meant, but quickly found out as the nighttime temperatures dropped to the upper tens. The next day turned out cold and mostly cloudy. […]