Let’s get back to our California expedition, starting at the beach. A quick factoid: 54 percent of the people in the United States live within 80 kilometers (50 miles) of our shorelines. That makes historical sense, since settlement naturally began on the east, west, and Gulf coasts and moved inland. So you’d think that packing […]

We already stuck a toe into California — and quickly pulled it back out when it landed in the searing Mojave Desert. But let’s tough it out and take another look at the Golden State. Golden, as in sunny, and golden because of the fortunes made by the lucky few who found gold high in […]

You name it. If it’s beautiful, California probably has it. Too bad the first view lots of people get of the state is bleak and monotonous. I’m talking about the Mojave Desert, which people driving into Southern California run smack into. Every time I’m there, I think about Tom Joad as well as the waves […]

On our journey through the American West, it’s about time to mosey into California, America’s most populous state by far. To give you an idea of just how popular this “land of milk and honey” became, California is only 1½ times bigger than another western state — Wyoming — but it has 74 times more […]

You get your history first in this posting. The oft-told stories of America’s development often paint an incomplete picture. Schoolkids learn how the British, French, and Dutch colonized the East Coast of North America; about the slow but steady subjugation of native tribes there and beyond the Appalachian Mountains; of Spanish missionaries’ seeding the faith […]

Is a grain of sand just a tiny rock? If so, we’re about to leave red-rock Utah, about which I’ve been writing, for the rockiest state in the Union. Nevada, largely an uninhabited, alkali wasteland pocked with gambling and golf resorts but mostly ramshackle towns built around a few gas stations, taverns, and cafés, is […]

Writing, as I did last posting, about Utah — an American state named after the Ute Indians, the “People of the Mountains” who once controlled that territory west of the main spine of the Rockies —brings back a vivid memory. Carol and I were interviewing and photographing at the Grand Canyon in Arizona, the state […]