America’s baddest badlands

by Sean McLachlan on


One of the greatest things about the United States is its environmental diversity. From towering forests of pine to sun-hammered deserts, from snowy peaks to steaming swamps, this nation has it all.

Some of the most compelling places are also the harshest. Take this view of the sand dunes of Death Valley, taken by talented photographer John Bruckman. This is the worst part of the Mojave Desert–lower, hotter, and drier than any other spot in the country, yet it has a subtle beauty this image captures so well. With the majority of us living in cities or suburbs, these open, empty spaces call out to us.

They certainly do to me. When I moved from the leafy upstate New York to southern Arizona for university, I discovered what people really mean when they talk about America’s wide open spaces. They set you free, and they can kill you if you’re not prepared, yet somehow their deadliness only adds to the feeling of freedom.

America’s badlands remind us that life can cling to even the bleakest of landscapes, that the empty places can sometimes be those most worth visiting.

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Photo Gallery: Abandoned Americana

by Sean McLachlan on


The old America is all around us. Americans used to be farmers. They used to go to drive-in movies. They used to think Route 66 was the greatest highway in the world. Some still do.

If you drive out of the city and leave the strip malls and cookie-cutter suburban homes behind, you’ll find it soon enough. Head down a county road and you’ll pass dilapidated farmhouses and overgrown gardens, the handiwork of people from our grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ generation. Like this old farm in Clay County, Missouri, near the Jesse James farm. I was with a couple of friends on a Jesse James road trip and we drove many of the back roads of western Missouri, places where Jesse committed his crimes and hid out from the law.

Everywhere we went we found this old Americana. On the outskirts of Kansas City we found a drive-in movie theater unchanged since the 1960s, and still open for half the year. To the west of Lexington we followed a potholed country road that led to a tributary of the Missouri River. Half a century ago there was a ferry at the end, popular enough that this road was lined with gas stations, hotels, and nice homes. The ferry disappeared when I-70 was built, and one by one the homes and businesses were abandoned.

Then there’s route 66, half ghost highway and half tourist trap. And old boom-and-bust mining towns like Bodie, California, now a State Historic Park. Not to mention all the failed businesses, the empty big box stores and bankrupt shopping malls that are creating the new ghost towns of the U.S. Much of industrial Detroit looks like an archaeological site.

Next time you go on a road trip in the U.S., get off the Interstate and take a county road. drive slow and look around. You’ll find the old America that hasn’t quite left us.

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Photo gallery: children of the world

by Sean McLachlan on


When I’m on the road, children make some of my best new acquaintances. A foreigner with a backpack is a surefire cure to a dull day, and a crowd of giggling kids will make even the most tired traveler smile.

Take this great shot by Robin Lerner, for example. Two Indian kids being silly, like silly kids everywhere. Sad to say, Robin tells us these children were begging at a bus station. When they realized they weren’t going to get any money, they stayed and goofed off with Robin and his travel companions. Poverty hadn’t dampened their spirit and they had a good time with the foreigners practicing their two words of English: “Hello” and “banana”.

I wonder if they taught Robin any of their language? Kids make great language teachers because swapping vocabulary is a game they never seem to get tired of. Most of my Amharic was taught to me by Ethiopian schoolkids, and I learned a lot of Arabic from kids when I used to work in the Middle East. The fact that my ability in both languages is pretty poor is my fault, not theirs!

Rob’s photo summarizes why children are one of the highlights of travel, especially budget and adventure travel that takes you to places where visitors are an uncommon sight. Check out the gallery below for more images of kids around the world, all taken by the talented photographers in Gadling’s flickr pool, plus a couple of cute shots by my wife, who fell in love with the wonderful children of Ethiopia.

Have some nice photos of children in far-off lands? Share them on flickr and you might see your artwork up on Gadling!

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Photo Gallery- Abandoned Schools

by Chris Owen on

Over the years, with declining student enrollment and big budget cuts, many school districts are closing schools. Sometimes districts lease old buildings out to charter schools, businesses, or nonprofit organizations, but often the buildings simply sit empty and fall into disrepair. One organization has a plan to change that.

GOOD, the integrated media platform for people who want to live well and do good, had an idea. In an effort to “Repurpose” abandoned schools, GOOD readers were asked to imagine a way to repurpose an abandoned school building so that the space once again serves the needs of its community.

Caroline Hadilaksono came up with the idea of a Farm to Table Urban Food Center that creates “an all-in-one ecosystem for food, where members of a community would be able to grow, prepare, distribute, and consume food, all in one place” says Hadilaksono on the GOOD website.
The plan would include an outdoor urban farm; forward-thinking indoor hydroponic farms and vertical gardens; a for-profit cafe, farmer’s market, and produce store; and a nonprofit kitchen for feeding the homeless community. Classroom space would be used to educate the public on cooking, nutrition and agriculture classes.

Our photo gallery of Abandoned Schools around the United States offers a bunch of candidates for what looks to be a great repurposing idea.

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Win $10,000 in the 2010 National Geographic Photo Contest

by Kraig Becker on

National Geographic has launched their 2010 Photography Contest, giving one lucky shutterbug the chance to take home a prize that includes $10,000 in cash and a trip to Washington DC to attend the annual National Geographic Photography Seminar in January, 2011. But that’s not all, as the winning photograph will also be published in an upcoming issue of National Geographic magazine, which is a dream come true for many amateur and professional photographers.

Entries are being accepted in the categories of People, Places, and Nature, and all submissions must be in a digital format and uploaded from the contest’s homepage. You can enter as many photos as you would like, but there is an entry fee of $15 per image. The contest ends on November 30, 2010, so get to work on sorting through those photos.

In a few weeks time, the best submissions to date will begin to appear in web galleries online, and we’ll all be allowed to browse them and vote for our favorites. Some of the best entries will also be made into wallpapers that can be used as desktop backgrounds and some will be converted into online jigsaw puzzles as well.

For an idea of what you’re up against in this contest, check out a gallery of the best entries from last year by clicking here and then see who the overall winners were by clicking here. After perusing those galleries, I can see I have my work cut out for me.