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!
Like many, many people, I got a bike during the pandemic because there are no more team sports, so to get exercise out of the house, a road bike is a great way to see scenery and burn calories. I have actually been on bikes of different kinds all my life, starting with getting second place in the New England BMW Championships in 1982, to cycling 100km in Japan and camping in 2007. The torn ACL I suffered in 2015 put an end I thought to my time on a bike as I could not even get my knee to bend enough to pedal. I sold my bike and gave away all my gear. However, after a while, my knee did get better and I could run and jump again, and as you can see from these photos, ride a bike again! It is also my nature that when i do something, I do it all the way (within reason). So where in April I was doing relatively flat rides of 25 miles, just 3 months later that tuns into riding my bike to the highest peak in the area, Sandia Crest!
Almost exactly two years later, I returned to Quarai Mission Ruins for a second visit (see first visit photos), this time as part of a drive with the BMW Car Club of America, New Mexico Chapter. I actually did not know for sure we would be stopping at these ruins, so it was a nice surprise for me to see them again. A lot has changed in two years, as I did not have the car i drove their in then, and I was still shooting with a DSLR camera, not the most advanced Sony mirrorless camera there is. One thing that did not change, though, was Quarai itself. Still not a single cloud in the sky there to enhance my photos, so I used the sun to create lens flares to add drama to the tall stone walls of the mission. Have you been to Quarai? Let me know in the comments below.
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.
Ghost Town becomes a Cemetery in Dawson New Mexico
There are very remote places in New Mexico, and there are very small towns in New Mexico, many of which I have featured here on Jason Collin Photography. However, when you have a town miles from anywhere, that requires you to then drive miles down a dirt road, and the only thing in your ghost town is a cemetery full of victims for tragic mining accidents, it is hard to get more remote than that! Such is Dawson, New Mexico, a ghost town with a historic cemetery and that it all. Though remote, It is worth making the drive to if you are in nearby Angel Fire, Eagle Nest, or Cimarron. With various types of graves, tombstones, and historical information, I was surprised to find something like this at the end of the road. Read more about this ghost town on Atlas Obscura and check out the map below to visit this place for yourself!
Driving down a valley road in southern Arizona, I could not have been more surprised with how delightful I found the small, hidden town of Bisbee. I have never seen a town wedged into a very narrow, very steep valley like Bisbee is. The topography forces some creative home building, such as walls for leveling out the property. What do the people of Bisbee do with these walls? Many of them embedded colorful glass bottles into them! And the narrow gaps between houses? Well you might find and art museum amount of paintings hanging up! I highly recommend visiting Bisbee someday and feeling the great vibe of this hidden gem of a town.
My work as a rural land real estate photographer takes me to some very, very out of the way places in New Mexico. You may have seen many of these photos on Jason Collin Photography before. On one such recent trip, it took me past Trementina, New Mexico, which like many tiny towns in name only, the one thing they have is a post office. Next to the post office I saw this ancient, abandoned gas station. I have a long history of photographing abandoned things, which I learned to be called haikyo, from my time first exploring them in Japan in the 00s. I even had an exhibition featuring those photographs. Let me know in the comments below what year you think that gas pump last filled up a car? Or maybe just a tractor??
