END OF A ROAD; UNRAVELING THE MYTH

With so many highs it was difficult to choose favorites. On a different day we might name another place. How does one judge descending into the New River Gorge against wading in the Colorado's frigid waters on a Glen Canyon beach? What makes learning about the one-armed, explorer, cartographer and general badass John Wesley Powell any less intriguing then witnessing Native American dance? Is the culture of the Puebloan people preserved at Bandelier National Monument any less important than the sculpture gardens at the Nasher Center? Is anything more beautiful than stumbling upon the expansive crater of Valles Caldera at sunset, or watching J look upon the Pacific Ocean for the first time, or having a cool lake to ourselves on a sweltering Texas day?

PAGEANTRY AND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

The Fremont Experience is a walkway connecting casinos, gift shops, and free-standing pagodas in a covered outdoor mall. A Michael Jackson impersonator and a man in a banana hamock had claimed corners on which to busk. Situated between them was a woman in a habit and pasties, intensely focused on her phone in seeming ignorance of her nudity. Heavy equipment could be seen demolishing a building from behind scaffolding touting a forthcoming new Vegas. Zip-liners whizzed past, over it all.