Road trips are often dotted with stops suggested by the website Atlas Obscura. Such was the case for a recent trip to Tucson, Arizona where in an open air park, one can find a life sized sculpture of The Last Supper. The sculpture is part of the Garden of Gethsemane in Tucson, Arizona which can be reserved for special events. I was wondering what type of event you’d want such a sculpture for the background of? The original painting is of course in color and seems so active. The sculpture in white is much more stark, without that sense of movement so much. Scroll to the map below fro the location of this unusual garden sculpture.
Atlas Obscura is a great website for finding hidden gems and odd places when traveling. This is how Art Cartopia Museum came on my radar on a recent rural land photography shoot in Trinidad, Colorado. This museum is free (though donations encouraged) and dog friendly indoors and out, and open during Covid-19 for guests wearing masks. What can you see at this museum? Art cars of all kinds, styles, and designs! A van covered in eyeballs? Yes. A huge skeleton driving on top of a car? Yes. A dentist’s dream (or nightmare?) car? Yes. Oddities abound in car form. The owner as one would expect is friendly, a character, and makes you feel like you are the very first visitor ever to the museum, which to me is always a sign of a great host, making you feel like you are the first visitor ever!
We went up to Santa Fe, New Mexico to see a Guinness Book of World Records setting whale! How is that possible with Santa Fe not only being landlocked, but also mountainous? Well, it is a whale made of recycled plastic on the campus of Santa Fe Community College. Regular readers of Jason Collin Photography will note how many times Atlas Obscura sites are featured in my photo stories, and thanks again to that site (and for Jessica finding it), we had a whale of an adventure hundreds of miles from the ocean. See the photos below to learn what makes Ethyl the Whale so special. Want to visit this site yourself? Check out the map at the end of the photo story.
Not quite a ghost town, not quite totally forgotten, but Lowell, Arizona is certainly in the past. Walking down its main street (and only street), Erie Street, you pass storefronts full of dust covered merchandise, classic cars, a Greyhound bus waiting for no one, pool halls, and a gas station that is not exactly full service anymore, even if you were willing to pay more than 22 cents per gallon! This place fascinated me. In front of the Greyhound bus I just sat right on the sidewalk for 20 minutes trying to listen to the stories coming through the cracks of the sidewalks, the walls, the signs.
Atlas Obscura is a great resource for finding odd places to stop when traveling between places. In this case, we were driving from Sedona, Arizona to Tucson and made a 40 minute detour to see the Domes of Casa Grande. Atlas Obscura describes these domes as being built around the late 1970s for computer manufacturing, but were never actually completed as you can see in the aerial drone photos below. What are the rumors for what happens in the domes and its tunnels now? Nothing less than maybe satanic worship. The area is totally fenced off with no trespassing signs as they have been slated for demolition, but still stood as of January 2020.
Driving back to Albuquerque after a weekend of rural land real estate photographer in Angel Fire along the very scenic Route 66, one can find amongst an unbroken stretch of canyon, trees and river a place that very much stands out, the Johnnie Meier Classical Gas Pump Museum. Thanks to Atlas Obscura, a great website for finding strange and odd things, we knew to be on the lookout for it. There are not just old gas pumps, but any number of things from a past that is slowly being forgotten. For me seeing the old coin operated animal rides that I used to take in the 1970s and 1980s, it was a strong shot of nostalgia. Even the old cigarette machine jogged my memory to when you used to see them in every restaurant waiting room. And when was gas only 32¢ cents a gallon last?
When I heard of this ghost town near Hillsboro, New Mexico I was quite excited. Exploring haikyo in Japan (and even here in the U.S.) was the source of some of my greatest adventures. All of these past places were just forgotten and open for exploring. Lake Valley Ghost Town, however, had an admission gate and a museum! Despite this it was still interesting to see an old safe lying open in the desert, wagon wheels leaning against fences, and to listen for old voices. It was useful having actual signs describing what each place was in a past life, even if it took a lot of mystery and imagination away.
