Journalists love to call Slab City the "last free place" ... Near dark future or radically self-reliant utopia?

The Salton Sea. Feels like the ocean, smells of sea and salt, but sounds only like the highway with faint wings between the drone of big rigs.

Joshua Tree versus Marfa desert art hipster monster battle 'n' stuff

Lots of things are called an "oasis"--I'm not sure I've ever been in an actual one before.

Best to approach deliberately on foot and open your mind to ideas of space, of presence, of absence, of volume.

What does it really mean to say "In the time of the dinosaurs"?

Give a man a pizza and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to make pizza and he may turn out to be Chris Bianco.

Surely deep architectural misunderstandings are a sign of a civilization in decline.

Who knew that an RV park might have a batting cage. KL works out the road kinks.

Nabbing a Guinness and a game of 8 ball at Humphrey's "2 Lane" in Globe, AZ

NDN deco ruins at the crossing of the Salt River. Everything has become the red that is Arizona.

Quemado, NM Christmas tree. Because antlers. Followed by a big, fat slice of pie at El Sarape.

For the first short day of travel, we break south in a bid for warm weather. It snows in Pie Town.

We picked up the RV on the day of winter solstice. We opt not to purchase the rattlesnake wine holder. I may regret it.

We have secured our rental of a garish motor home with which to escape Christmas. We hope, instead, to be lost in the barren belly of America.