Z is for Zilker Gardens in Austin, Texas

A gate at the beautiful Zilker Gardens in Austin, Texas. If you are ever in Texas's capital city, be sure to visit there. 

I'm so glad you stopped by to visit my blog during the A to Z Challenge. It's been fun sharing some of the places my wife and I have visited.

A gate at Zilker Gardens

Park bench, Zilker Gardens

Water lily

Y is for Yellowstone

Yellowstone National Park, I am told, is one big volcano waiting to erupt either today or a thousand years from today. And when it does, one is probably better off somewhere on the other side of the world.

X is for Texas

"All my exes live in Texas. That's why I'm in Tennessee." 

--Sanger and Linda Shafer

Dang, iddn't that cute? My mom and my three older brothers were born in Texas. Mom came from the tiny central Texas town of Paige, population Not Much. All of us spent most of our lives in Massachusetts, but Mom clearly missed her childhood home and the fields of springtime bluebonnets. Now that my wife and I are retired, we live only a short drive from the Texas border and the city of El Paso, where I go once a month for my writers' group meetings.

Rio Grande in the Big Bend area. Mexico is on the left bank.

Cholla cactus and bird's nest, Big Bend area.

W is for Mount Washington

As with all of the places mentioned in my A to Z blogs, one or two photos don't do justice to Mount Washington, the tallest point on the eastern seaboard of the US. I know of three ways to ascend this monster: the cog railway, the road, and hiking. We have done the first two and wouldn't even dream of doing the third. The weather can turn from summer to winter in moments and kill the unprepared hiker. Mount Washington holds a world's record for strongest surface wind ever recorded, at 231 miles per hour. We rode up in a van one September day and saw ice-covered boulders on the way.

V is for Vermont

Stone house, Chester Depot, Vermont

My wife's father was born in the sleepy town of Chester Depot, Vermont, known for its stone houses. Her grandmother lived in Manchester, Vermont until age 102. There was a sturdy woman. We motored up Vermont-way many times over the decades that we lived in Massachusetts.

U is for Utah

When we first visited Utah, it seemed as though every which way we turned we found another national park. Heck, I had never even heard of Canyonlands National Park, and suddenly there we were, completely taken in by its beauty. We've returned a few times, once to visit Antelope Island on Great Salt Lake. Virtually nothing lives in that lake, we were told. It's much too saline for fish. The only life seems to be tiny shrimp that are noticeable for the odor of their tiny little carcasses and the tiny bugs they attract.

On Antelope Island, Salt Lake, Utah
where the antelope play

But wait, don't let that stop you. A causeway connects the mainland to the island, where antelope and buffalo abound. If you ever have the chance to visit Utah, for goodness' sake do it.

T is for Taos, New Mexico

San Francisco de Asis, near Taos

A lovely, quirky little town north of Santa Fe. Images of the San Francisco de Asis church have been captured on canvas by Georgia O'Keeffe, on film by Ansel Adams, and on digital cameras by thousands of people like me. It dates from the late 1700s. If you visit Santa Fe, try to make time for Taos and the Taos Pueblo, a community said to have been occupied for over 1,000 years.

Curio shop, Taos

S is for Shiprock

Any fan of the wonderful Tony Hillerman novels has read about Shiprock, the majestic rock formation that stands out in northwestern New Mexico near the Four Corners of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. It is a holy place for the Navajo, who don't want people to get too close to it. Listen closely to the wind, and perhaps you will hear the spirits of Tony Hillerman and his detectives Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn wandering across the desert landscape.

R is for Rio Grande Gorge

If you follow the Rio Grande southward, it changes dramatically. The Rio Grand Gorge is near Taos and has carved a path through rock that's hundreds of feet deep.  The Gorge Bridge is nearly 600 feet above the river.  But we folks are thirsty in the Southwest. We dam up the river at Elephant Butte and Caballo Lake, we drain it off, and we drink it up. The river depends heavily on Rocky Mountain snowmelt, so when the snows don't come, the water flow is greatly lessened. By the time you reach my home city of Las Cruces over 200 miles to the south, the water can be completely gone. You can walk across a dry river bank without wetting the soles of your shoes.

Q is for Quebec

We visited Quebec several times and have always loved the place. Montmorency Falls lies on the north side of the Saint Lawrence River just across from Quebec City. There is a lower, more modern part of the city, while the walled upper part, Haute Ville, is centuries old and was a battle site in the French and Indian War. The building is the elegant hotel Chateau Frontenac, which oversees a boardwalk and the river.

Chateau Frontenac	Montmorency Falls

P is for Pompey's Pillar National Monument

We had never heard of Pompey's Pillar National Monument, which sits alongside the Yellowstone River in Montana, until our visit to the area last year. Carved on the side are Native American petroglyphs and the signature of explorer William Clark. I walked to the 150-foot summit using the stairway you see in the photo. Although I saw some of the carvings, the lighting didn't lend itself to decent photos.

O is for Organ Mountains

The Organ Mountains are a rugged, gorgeous mountain range separating Las Cruces, New Mexico from the White Sands Missile Range. Wikipedia says it's 85 miles long, though I would not have guessed it was nearly that long. Anyway, it provides a perfect backdrop for the city. When we were new here and still trying to find our way around, we always knew we could get home by heading toward the mountains.

N is for New England

My wife and I grew up there, so it's natural that we have a lot of New England photographs. This is a lighthouse with picket fence in Newburyport, Massachusetts. I took it in the summer of '04, the year before we heard the siren call of the Southwest.

M is for Mount Shasta

Until well into middle age, my wife and I had never been to California. Since '99 we started making up for it, visiting San Francisco, Yosemite, Napa Valley, and much more. A few years ago, we drove our RV up the west coast as far as Oregon. On our way back we stopped near the utterly gorgeous and how-could-you-possibly-miss-it Mount Shasta. When we registered at the local RV park, I asked the clerk where I could get the best view of the mountain. She told me she had no idea, that she had lived near the mountain for so many years, she had stopped seeing it.

L is for Little Bighorn

View from the top of Little Bighorn

We visited Little Bighorn National Monument in eastern Montana in the summer of 2009. Here in 1876 a band of Lakota Sioux, Arapaho and Cheyenne led by Chief Sitting Bull annihilated the outnumbered U.S. 7th Army cavalry regiment led by General George Armstrong Custer. The photo is taken from the top of the hill where the battle took place. Later, markers were placed where bodies had been found.

K is for Kerouac Park

Beat poet Jack Kerouac lived in Lowell, Massachusetts, and the city created a small downtown park in his honor. It has beautiful granite slabs such as this one with his poetry and excerpts from his prose. It's free and open to the public. Kids enjoy skateboarding there.

J is for Johnson City, Texas

We discovered Johnson City on our long drive from Las Cruces to Austin back in 2007. A very nice lady there bought a whole passel of my books to sell in her gift store. She sold them all and asked me for more, and then did it again. (And then, alas, the recession hit.) Can you understand why I am partial to this pretty town? The photo shows a Halloween hay bale just outside of town.

Incidentally, it was the boyhood home of President Lyndon Johnson.

I is for Idaho

Idaho Falls, Idaho 2013

I don't know much about Idaho, but we drove through last year and found it beautiful. In particular we enjoyed the city of Idaho Falls. This photo taken near the downtown shows why the city is so aptly named.

H is for Home in New Mexico

Home. There's no place like it.

Oddly, I didn't come up with many interesting places we've been that begin with H. Luckily, there is always Home. We moved into our little adobe abode back in aught-six, and barring our winning a lottery we don't even play, I expect we'll happily stay here. We do have our windy season, though. Maybe one day a Mega Millions ticket will blow into our yard. I will pick it up to toss into recycling, never realizing it is the unclaimed billion-dollar winner. Alas, because of our missed chance we will be relegated to living out our pleasant lives in our pleasant Home.

G is for Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon, South Rim 1998

We've been lucky to have visited the Grand Canyon at both the north and south entrances. Whatever praise you may have heard lavished on it is amply justified. My daydream is to ride down into the canyon on a burro, but I'm probably a little to heavy for the animal, and I confess to be a bit squeamish. I can imagine the awe Ferdi Grofe must have felt that inspired him to write the Grand Canyon Suite, which nearly does the canyon justice.

Grand Canyon, North Rim 2010