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Stories by Ruth Newell

Forts of the Deep South

Conquistadors to the Civil War, Florida to Mississippi.

Empires rise and they fall, leaving behind the ruins of their fortresses. Until armored warships rendered masonry forts and their black powder cannons obsolete, warring European empires set on colonizing the rest of the world ...

Louisiana's Great River Road

Antebellum homes adorn the banks of the Mississippi above New Orleans.

Louisiana’s Great River Road is actually two historic corridors reaching seventy miles from New Orleans to beyond Baton Rouge on either side of the Mississippi. First Spanish, then French, and finally Creole landowners built their ...

Mexico Beach

Escape to a slower pace on Florida's Gulf Goast.

Here’s the thing about Mexico Beach: It’s not in Mexico. It’s on the panhandle 20 minutes south of Panama City and just off the tip of Port St. Joe – a little bit of yesterday ...

Death Valley – Why?

Transcendence found in the California desert.

Deep in the belly of Death Valley National Park, I pitched my tent up against sage bushes looking out at snowcapped mountains. Campers sat in their vehicles, some huddled in their tents, all dodging the ...

Florida Road-tripping

In touch with the Sunshine State's natural side.

California isn't the only state that holds claim to a scenic coastal drive. With more miles of coastline than any other state in the contiguous lower forty-eight, Florida has several. State Road Atlantic 1 Alternate ...

Far-flung Corners of Texas

Charmed by the state's remote beauty.

Seventh time was the charm. Took me that many drive-throughs before I fell in love with a corner of Texas. Because aside from Padres Island National Seashore, I just couldn’t see much to like. To ...

Leonard Knight and His Mountain

Revisiting this labor of love in the Southern California desert.

Mahatma Gandhi believed that we should not let the idea of seeing individual actions as insignificant deter us from contributing to and participating in the changes we wish to see. Apparently, he isn’t alone in ...

Paolo's Phoenix: Cosanti, Arizona

A lesson in sustainability.

In Paradise Valley, overlooking the 70,900-acre Agua Fria National Monument, is the Cosanti gallery, studio and home to 93-year-old anti-materialist architect and urban planner Paolo Soleri. It isn’t surprising that this author of six books, ...

Cabot's Miracle: Desert Hot Springs and Pueblo

Two and a half hours north of San Diego.

I’m in love with a dead man. Honestly, if there ever was a Man of Men to pine for, it would be Cabot Yerxa, who died three years after I was born. Not only was ...

Sea Ranch Chapel

Just north of Salt Point State Park, half way between Point Reyes National Seashore and Fort Bragg along the Pacific Coastal Highway, is a place called Sea Ranch. About 300 of the 1,800 uniformly shingle-clad, ...

Biosphere 2: Man-Made Wonder

The world's largest living science center is a half-hour north of Tucson.

Between 1987 and 1994, the $200-million Biosphere 2 structure with its two “lungs” and Energy Center was constructed on 40 rolling meadow acres west of the Santa Catalina Mountains and a half-hour north of Tuscon, ...

SoCal Five-Gear Weekend Excursions

Escaping the crowds and congested highways of coastal southern California, road warriors take to the hills. SoCal boasts some of the most beautiful scenic highways in the country, some right outside the largest metro areas. ...

Gila, Geronimo and More in New Mexico

Visit for the Gila River Festival, 9/13-16.

Along the Gila River built into five interconnected caves high in a canyon wall, in the 2.7-million-acre Gila National Forest and Wilderness Area, is a 700-year-old Mogollon pueblo designated as the Gila Cliff Dwellings National ...

Spectacular Mono Lake

See the Eastern Sierra's great salt lake, just east of Yosemite.

Highway 89 south out of Lake Tahoe to Route 395 has got to be one of THE most pleasurable rides in a stick shift. It’s definitely a road reserved for the unfettered. The steep switchbacks ...

Utah's Moab Music Festival

"Concerts in the park" takes on a whole new meaning.

From August 29th through September 10th, music will echo through some of Utah’s most scenic canyons. The Moab Music Festival aims to merge music with the natural landscape found along the Colorado River in the ...

Close Encounters in CA's High Desert

Experience far-out energy healing at the Integratron.

I may have had some lunatic notions in my day, but I can assure you that none of them have been implanted or otherwise suggested by extraterrestrials. Not a one. George Van Tassel, however, can’t ...

Toth’s Trail of Whispering Giants Born in La Jolla

Forty years ago, in 1972, a man spent six months chiseling the face of an Indian into a cliff between Marine Street and Windansea Beach in La Jolla. Peter Wolf Toth had just dropped out ...

Joshua Tree: More than Just Camping

There isn’t anything spectacular about the town visually. Like many desert towns, the buildings along the main drag are old, unkempt and often vacant. There are few sidewalks, and no trees or landscaping that would ...

California's Active Volcanoes

A tour from the Mojave to Mono Lake

There are more than 550 active volcanoes in the world, five of which are in California. It's to be expected from a state sitting on the eastern edge of the Ring of Fire. Between Barstow ...

Olive Fruit Fly Takes Toll Statewide

Jim Engelke, owner of Fallbrook Olive Oil, bought an avocado grove in east Fallbrook eight years ago. With the North American Free Trade Agreement allowing the importation of avocados from south of the border and ...

Is a Fallbrook Business Improvement District Necessary?

With the intent of creating consistency for local businesses during a floundering economy, Vince Ross, president of the Fallbrook Revitalization Council, has commissioned a study to determine the viability of developing a business improvement district ...

Fallbrook’s Shrinking Avocado

Since the first avocado trees were planted in 1912, Fallbrook’s avocado industry’s been thriving. The Fallbrook Chamber of Commerce estimates annual sales near $26 million. However, due to water-access issues, the size of the average ...

Catalina's Lonely Peaks

One of seven islands in the Channel Island archipelago, Catalina lies 22 miles due west off Los Angeles. It doesn’t surprise me that the Victorian botanist-poet Blanche Trask took up residence there; it hadn’t been ...

Salt Point State Park: Hidden California Coast

From Moro Rock to the memorable Bixby Creek Bridge, beauty abounds along the Pacific Coastal Highway in the form of uninterrupted expansive views extending to the beryl-blue horizon. The road from Pismo Beach to Half ...

Slab City, CA

Trying to change the negative reputation that the Slabs had acquired over the years as a melting pot for drug addicts, hippies and psych ward releases, Builder Bill created the Range, just southeast of the ...

Finding It in Shoshone, California

For the record: I’m not a fancy, gotta-have-posh type of woman; I’m OK with “rough around the edges.” I’m instinctively drawn to character, whether quaint and endearing or quirky and eclectic. I like spice, color ...

Nothing Like the PCH

Undeniably one of the most picturesque roads you’ll ever traverse, California’s Route 1 north of Santa Barbara is a largely contiguous strip of undeveloped coastline with endless, arresting views. (“Undeveloped,” as in not much there ...

La Jolla Sea Caves

Weathered from a 75-million-year-old sandstone cliff in La Jolla are seven sister caves. Like many other seaside caverns, these, too, have been used by pirates. Only the cargo they smuggled was human. California’s eight-year-gold rush ...

Washington Grove, Maryland – Town within a Forest

Northeast of Washington, D.C., lays a “town within a forest.” Washington Grove is a shady hamlet tucked beneath an age-old stand of forest. It’s a town built purposefully around trees, one of the early intentionally ...

Trona Pinnacles, Mojave Desert, California

The Trona Pinnacles (not to be confused with Pinnacles National Monument near Steinbeck’s Soledad) is one of those natural geological wonders that awes. Set back five miles off SR 178, twenty miles east of Ridgecrest, ...

Napa: Prager Winery and Portworks

As I drive south out of Napa Valley after a weeklong housesit, I stop at Prager Winery and Portworks in quaint St. Helena on the recommendation of a friend. The tasting room is in a ...

Badwater Salt Flats in Death Valley, California

Death Valley is just that – a low-lying valley cradled between three monstrous mountain ranges. And frankly, there isn’t another way to describe it other than to assure you that it is bloody majestic! The ...

Taos, New Mexico: Natural Hot Springs on the Rio Grande

Although a longtime fan of hot tubs, my first experience in a natural hot spring was outside of Taos, New Mexico. As the sun was setting over the mesa, I climbed for an hour on ...

Calistoga, California

I woke to overcast skies and decided it would be a good day to hike. With a hot cup of Roastaroma in hand, a quick Google search led me to several trails within an hour’s ...

Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms, California

After hiking in Joshua Tree National Park, I camped in Indian Cove beneath batholiths. I had come to see the Wonderland of Rocks, which thanks to Minerva Hoyt is publicly preserved and accessible. Surrounded by ...

Grayton Beach State Park, Florida

Eight days into our around-the-country trip, my friend and I walked the long stretch of white sand beach in Grayton Beach State Park from the setting sun towards the rising full moon. We had pulled ...

On the Chesapeake: Easton, Maryland

As I drove east across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge at dusk, a Peregrine falcon rose from the water over the railing and above the car into the trusses above, a fish gripped firmly in its ...

Roswell, New Mexico

Located in the Pecos Valley, Roswell grew up around large cattle ranches on land previously occupied by Mescalero Apaches. From the development of Fort Stanton in 1855 to the closure of the Walker Air Force ...

Vikingsholm Castle, Lake Tahoe

Vikingsholm Castle sits at the bottom of a steep, mile-long switchback driveway that drops 500 feet to the shore of Lake Tahoe. Once at the bottom, I purchased a ticket to participate in a guided ...

Historic Coronado, California

I float in a sun-warmed, peanut-shaped tile pool, watching the breeze flip the palm fronds against a turquoise San Diego sky, sipping a midday mimosa. Cally, the woman for whom I was house sitting, had ...

Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico

Carlsbad Cavern National Park lies within the limestone Guadalupe Mountain range – the world’s best-preserved Permian-age fossil reef – in what was once a shallow inland sea some 240-plus million years ago. I talked my ...

Hellhole Canyon, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

Pummeled by roaring, tent-folding winds most of the night, I awoke to the softest of morning gusts coming out of the canyon. Swaying in my hammock, I sipped freshly brewed licorice root tea surrounded by ...

Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Texas

The Amistad National Recreational Area on the Mexican border is beautiful waterway, surrounded with blooming prickly pear cactus and wildflowers. And, apparently, monster snakes. I was careful as I made my way down the rocky ...

Camel Lake, Apalachicola National Forest, Florida

After just a week on the road together, my friend and I found that we were living for the next set of trees, the next perfect spot to string the hammock. It may seem like ...

Padres Island National Seashore, Texas

The flag was at half-mast the Sunday morning last April when we pulled into Padres Island Visitors Center to purchase our backcountry camping permit to the largest undeveloped barrier island in the world. The National ...

Desert Oasis in Indian Canyons, Palm Springs

Having seen two of the palm groves at the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, I was inspired to drive north towards Palm Springs to see the largest palm groves in the world at the Agua Caliente ...

Oak Alley Plantation, Louisiana

The thing about bayous is that they are humid, wet places. Very wet places. The trees that grow there know it. The things that live there know it. I knew it, too. Know it still. ...

San Diego's Inland Sea: Salton Sea, California

I rolled my Celica up to the Border Patrol guards stopping traffic along Route 111 north of El Centro. When asked where I was headed, I explained that I was here to see “their” sea. ...

Biltmore Estate, Asheville, North Carolina

Originally set on 125,000 (now a mere 8,000) acres in the rolling Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia, Biltmore Estate was built by George Vanderbilt along the French Broad River in North Carolina. With its original ...

Boulder Park, Jacumba, California

Out on Route 8 east of San Diego stands the 70-foot Desert View Tower above Boulder Park in Jacumba. For three dollars I was allowed to climb the three-story stone tower that houses a museum ...