Not the town of Seligman, Arizona. It's as obscure as ever and probably more so now than when these photos were shot.
     It's the photos themselves that have been rescued. In the past five years, I've moved across the country twice, broken some eggs, made some omelettes. One of the causalities of all this upheaval was almost all of my fine art photography portfolio. Gone without a trace. But then a minor miracle happened and I discovered that an old incarnation of the original Dry Heat Blog was still live on the interwebs and on it were many of my photos that I thought were gone forever. Sadly, these are not the high-res print files but they are at least good enough for viewing here on the current Dry Heat Blog.
     These images were originally published on March 1, 2009 after a road trip from Albuquerque, NM to Las Vegas, NV for the annual WPPI convention.
​Lots of good Route 66 stuff on the way!
     These photos were shot on a Canon 50D with a Lensbaby 2.0 and edited with some fancy Kubota Actions that I purchased at WPPI.

     I've been driving past this Route 66 landmark for years and have stopped to photograph it many times. Unfortunately, most of those images are lost to time and upheaval so I have gone once again to photograph what's left of the Whiting Bros. Filling Station and Motel that is off of I-40 west of Albuquerque, and about 10 miles east of Grants. These photos were shot on May 26, 2019.
     The Whiting Bros. company was established in 1926, the same year that U.S. Route 66 was designated across the southwestern United States. Whiting Bros. was based in St. Johns and Holbrook, Arizona and, at it's peak, operated more than a hundred filling stations and fifteen motels (including at least forty on the former U.S. Route 66 through Arizona and New Mexico).
     This particular station had a motel, according to the sign, but that building was apparently torn down. Next to the gas station there is a concrete foundation with nothing on it.
​     All photos shot with a Motorola MotoX4 and edited with Snapseed.

     Due to the runoff from heavy snow fall this winter, The Rio Grande River is running at an unprecedented level. The water is all the way out in the trees and when you drive over the Main Street Bridge in Los Lunas, it feels like you might fall in because the water is so high. My family moved to Lunas in 1982 and I don't ever recall seeing the river this way.
     The truth of the matter is that the Rio Grande should (and would) probably flood like this every year except for all the diversionary tactics we humans employee to mess it all up.
     These photos are from a few of different outings to Bosque Open Space areas in Rio Rancho, Corrales, and Los Lunas. 
     All photos shot with a Motorola Moto X4 and edited with Snapseed.

I've been fascinated with this little chapel since I first discovered it back in the day, that day being sometime around 2008. It's well hidden and most regular visitors to Old Town don't even know it's there. I feel like it exists in a slanty dimension and will reveal itself on a need to know basis.

If there were one question to sum up the area known as Meadow Lake, it would be, "What happened here?"  You could look in any direction and ask this question dozens of times.  For starters, there is a man-made lake that was built who knows when or why and was closed for reasons that remain mysterious. Aside from that, run down, abandoned, gutted and often burned mobile homes are strewn across the desert like forgotten dominoes, but right next door could be a beautiful and well maintained home.

And then there's this house.