Favorite Places

 Rocky Mountain National Park

My family and I have been taking summer trips to the Rockies to camp, hike, and escape the Texas heat since I was a child. I've got plenty of favorite places up there, but a couple of the best are Bierstadt Lake (named after Albert Bierstadt, some of whose paintings are housed in the Fred Jones Jr Museum) and Loch Vale both of which are excellent not only for the destination, but the hike there. Loch Vale is especially rewarding as you follow an icy spring up to the glacial lake that is the Loch, just below the alpine threshold.

Bierstadt Lake at Dawn by photographer John Naschinski. Source: Colorado Photo Source

The Loch by photographer John Naschinski. Source: Colorado Photo Source

Minamiaizu, Japan

In tenth grade my high school was selected by the Japanese International Cooperation Center (JICE) to send a delegation of students as "Goodwill Ambassadors" as part of a program working to foster better Japanese/American relations. I had the good fortune of being one of the students selected by the school administration to attend. In addition to our time spent in Tokyo, we also spent about a week with a host family in a small town in Fukushima called Minamiaizu where we hung out with the local teenagers and participated in the fall rice harvest, which brings me in a roundabout way to my point, which is I have never seen such a beautiful array of yellows and greens and oranges and reds as the trees which covered the mountains changed their fall colors.

(Personal Photo, view from the road outside our host house)

(Personal Photo, fog lying over the valley in the early morning)

New Mexico

Last but not least, New Mexico, specifically the area around Santa Fe, is another favorite spot of mine. I've been out camping and hiking in the Pecos wilderness outside Santa Fe more times than I can count, and all but one of them (an archaeological trip with OU's Dr Samuel Duwe) have been more or less spontaneous. The area is perfect for spontaneity: with some of the most National Forest land in the country, a trip to New Mexico costs little more than the price of food and gas (which isn't too much if you have some friends to car pool with). The land itself is stark and magnificent; standing on the plateaus or looking out across the desert and shrublands really puts into perspective the vastness of the Americas.

(Personal Photo, Pojoaque Pueblo, outside Santa Fe. Seems like it goes on forever)

(Personal Photo, somewhere off of US 84. I bet geologists would love this stratigraphy)

(Personal Photo, The Rio Grande. Makes me sad to think about what it must've been like before the dams)