Carl Henning

I am fascinated by the original residents of North America. So stopping at one more Indian ruins national monument was completely normal. The Aztec Ruins National Monument in New Mexico was the stop this trip.

A city so secret that it did nor appear on any maps and the people who lived there got there mail from a town many miles away. At least that was the case in the 1940’s. Los Alamos, New Mexico is on the map now. During World War 2 secret research into atomic energy was performed here, resulting in the only two atomic bombs dropped during warfare.

Not every site to visit is a national park or national monument. La Cieneguilla Petroglyphs are administered by the BLM. (That’s Bureau of Land Management, not Black Lives Matter.) The petroglyphs at this site were hard to reach. I needed my…

There’s no rolling stock at the Tucumcari Railroad Museum, but a few artifacts and a lot of history. 

Continuing our trip west, I resolved to drive through Tucumcari on old Route 66. If nothing else, there was a Route 66 sign to take a picture of. Two and half hours later we continued our journey. Who knew there was so much to do here?

Less well-know and less visited than the famous Cadillac Ranch, Slug Bug Ranch takes the same approach. That is, cars buried nose first in the ground with visitor-applied spray paint.

The Saint Petersburgh Museum of History featured a traveling exhibit of autographed baseballs, called Schrader’s Little Cooperstown. I t features over 5,000 autographed baseballs in random order. ARGH!

No Tiffany at this Selby Gardens, but there was a bit of history. Oh, yeah, and some flowers which I did not photograph. 

Flowers and stained glass. In downtown Sarasota, Florida, spared from development at the former home of Marie Selby, is a botanical garden, Selby Gardens. On our visit it was paired with Tiffany stained glass.

I am fascinated by the Spanish missions of the West. A ranger-led tour at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park added to my knowledge of the mission system. These four missions are only a couple miles apart; the Alamo is just slightly further away. There were two reasons for the closeness of these missions: 1. Defense. The Apache and Comanches raided the local tribes before the missions were built and after. 2. They shared a common ranch where thousand of cattle and sheep were pastured. Each week animals from the ranch were delivered to the missions.