In 2020 I visited the Art Cartopia Museum in Trinidad, Colorado where I was treated to views of the most creatively decorated cars you can imagine. One year later I was back in Trinidad, and just happened to be there the very day that these cars and many more took part in ArtoCade ArtCar Festival 2021. Seeing the cars out in broad daylight and in motion is a very different experience than seeing them parked in a dimly lit museum. This was the way these artcars were intended to be seen! After the parade, they parked on the closed off main street so you could go and get a closer look and see all the details that went into making each car a unique expression of automotive art in motion!
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!
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?
I recently went to Las Cruces, New Mexico on a rural land photography assignment. On the way back we made a detour to nearby Deming, New Mexico. Jessica is good at finding odd places to visit, often from a website called Atlas Obscura. We went to two places definitely deserving of the description obscure!
