Video Of The Day: Capturing Monument Valley, Arizona

In the United States, Memorial Day is the unofficial kickoff for summer. Stop by any cookout or barbeque today, and you’ll likely be asked by friends or family members what your travel plans are for the summer. It seems the season is nearly synonymous with travel. With the sunshine comes plenty of daydreaming about seaside vacations, nights camping under the stars, days off to visit friends and family and (of course) the quintessential road trip. Search “road trip” on video websites such as YouTube and Vimeo and you’ll find thousands of videos, each plotting more points on a map than the next. But instead of showing a time-lapse film of an epic trip, here’s a video of one of the most archetypal destinations on an American road trip – Monument Valley, Arizona. Watch to see road trippers soaking in the landscape. There really isn’t a better way to get motivated to start planning a road trip of your own.

Photo Of The Day: Zebra Canyon

Most travel photography fans are familiar with the striking, sun-dappled images of Arizona‘s famed Antelope Canyon popularized on computer desktop backgrounds around the world. But few people are acquainted with Zebra Canyon, its less popular, less crowded but equally fetching neighbor in Utah, captured excellently in today’s Photo of the Day from Flickr user oilfighter. Named because of its vivid pink stripes, Zebra Canyon is also referred to as a “slot” because of its narrowness – our intrepid photographer even had to leave his pack at the entrance!

Do your natural wonder photos belong here? Upload your favorite shots to the Gadling Flickr Pool and your image could be selected as our Photo of the Day.

Photo Of The Day – Arizona Desert

The Arizona desert seduces. When I was a kid, my grandparents collected a magazine called Arizona Highways, which featured honest-to-God, awe-inspiring vistas of the Grand Canyon State. (As you can see from the link, the periodical still exists.) I wouldn’t get to Arizona until I was 25, barreling down 93 from Las Vegas and crossing into New Mexico quickly. Those highways didn’t look like the highways of Arizona Highways. It would take a few additional visits before I got to see the intense beauty that filled the pages of my grandparents’ back copies.

Flickr user Styggiti captured this curious geological object on a hiking trail in Camp Creek Falls, Arizona.

Upload your favorite images to the Gadling Group Pool on Flickr. We choose our favorites from the bunch as Photos of the Day.

Photo Of The Day: The Wave In Utah

The amazing rock formation above, captured by Flickr user oilfighter, is called The Wave. Set near the border of Utah and Arizona, the intricate lines have been etched into the sandstone by millions of years of erosion and wind. It makes for a visually stunning setting doesn’t it? If you’re interested in seeing this amazing geological oddity in person, make sure to plan ahead – the Bureau of Land Management only allows 20 visitors per day in order to protect the site from damage.

Taken any great travel photos of your own? Why not add them to our Gadling group on Flickr? We might just pick one of yours as our Photo of the Day.

Video: animatronic recreation of the Gunfight at the OK Corral

I’ve been in a Wild West mood lately. I used to live in Tucson, Arizona, and loved the tales of gunfights, gold strikes, and crooked gamblers. I’ve been rediscovering some of that lately and my thoughts turned to Tombstone, the West’s quintessential tough town. It was here that the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday faced off against the notorious Cowboys and shot them to pieces just outside the OK Corral.

“Cowboy” was a derogative term in that time and place, reserved for rustlers, brawlers, and other ne’er-do-wells. Honest people who handled cattle were called cattlemen, range men, or by the Spanish term vaqueros. Most were Mexican or black, a fact Hollywood has seen fit to forget. The Cowboy gang that operated near Tombstone loved to steal cattle, shoot up saloons, and do all that other stuff from which legends are made. Americans love their bad guys.

They love cheesy tourist attractions too. I mean, how couldn’t you love an animatronic recreation of the Gunfight at the OK Corral? It takes place all day, every day in Tombstone. I challenge you to watch this video without smiling. Yes, it’s hokey, yes, it a bit embarrassing, but damn is it entertaining! A much less hokey live show is performed in Tombstone every day of the week at 2pm.

Want more Arizona cheesiness? Have you seen… The Thing?