My first weekend in Southeast Kansas coincided with the annual festival known as Little Balkans Days, held in Pittsburg to commemorate the region’s history as a melting pot of European immigrants back at the start of coal mining in the 1860s.

Across the road from our house is a fried chicken restaurant and a church. So it’s not so much that I wondered why the city of Pittsburg, Kansas — roughly 25 miles from Joplin, Missouri — has only one mosque.

I’m in the small town of Girard, in the southeast corner of Kansas, not too far from the Missouri border. I’ve been documenting the surrounding areas since driving here from San Diego a week ago, but with a ton of photos in my backlog I thought I’d share a teaser.

It was lucky that we ran into Jan, because otherwise we wouldn’t have backtracked and spent the afternoon crawling through stalagmites hundreds of feet under Montana.

I think any more weight from so many tourists might force the Yellowstone caldera down into the magma that powers all those geysers.

The 1500-year-old Bristlecone Pine trees tumble into the slowly eroding limestone breaks at a pace measured in centuries.

It takes most people five hours to complete the five mile journey to the top of Angel’s Landing and back. I did it in half that and still took a bit of video now and then, while sucking in much-needed oxygen.

Had I stumbled onto a sales pitch for the Mormon church, disguised as a ranger talk?

I’ve now spent the last two Julys tucked in a car, traveling hundreds of miles a day for weeks on end.

Recently I had the privilege of helping judge the San Diego CityBeat annual photo contest. It was fun despite being conducted through Flickr so that no one could hear my snarky comments. It was also a welcome excuse to ponder photography theory: How does one compare unrelated photos and ultimately choose one over the other, and just what exactly makes a successful photo anyway?