This week, Leanne is the guest host for our challenge. Her topic focuses on tourist attractions. She notes that photographers often have different goals from the average tourist when they visit a tourist attraction. As part of her challenge, she writes, “Do you travel around where you live or other places with ideas of what you want to photograph and how?” You can read her entire challenge post here. I discovered her work some time ago and have long admired her style of photography. Her site is a visual wonderland.

Her question led me to think about my blog and why I chose a place to photograph. Though I travel to areas with many tourists, I like to write about and share photos of less well-known attractions in the United States. For this challenge response, I am sharing images taken along scenic byways and local highways that may or may not be near major attractions. When we travel, we try to avoid the major roads that lead tourists from one place to another in this big country. Our preference is to find scenic byways to travel. There are many more opportunities for unique photographs on the more than 800 U.S., state, and local byways.

My opening photo is a drone shot above Coeur d’Alene Lake in Idaho. That highway in the image is the Lake Coeur d’Alene Scenic Byway. It travels along the lake’s eastern shore and offers stunning views of the water and surrounding mountains. Oh, and there are trees, lots of trees.

The highway between Silverton and Ouray in Colorado is known as the Million-Dollar Highway due to its high construction cost in the mountains when it was built over a century ago. The highway is a landscape photographer’s dream and a nervous mountain driver’s nightmare. The narrow road, steep dropoffs at the highway’s edge, and sharp curves demand that the driver pay attention to the task of driving and let the passengers take pictures at the many pull-offs along the roadway.

In South Dakota, U.S. Highway 16A is near many major tourist attractions. Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial are two places where tourists gather to take photos, but the highway is part of the Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway, a 70-mile (112 km) loop that takes you through some of the most dramatic landscapes and pristine lakes in the Black Hills.

On the Rogue-Umpqua Scenic Byway in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains, photographers can find many beautiful places for landscape photography. We did not travel the route’s entire 172 miles (275 km), but we did travel state routes 62 and 230 on the southern end of the byway.

The Great River Road winds through ten states, paralleling the Mississippi River. In an upcoming post, I share photos taken as we traveled along the scenic byway in northern Iowa, stopping at several cities along the river. At Muscatine’s Riverside Park, “Mississippi Harvest” depicts a larger-than-life-sized fisherman standing in a boat overflowing with clams, holding two clamming forks triumphantly in the air. While in the park, don’t forget to capture a photo of the World’s Largest Watermelon sculpture just a few hundred yards from Mississippi Harvest.

Some scenic byways have special-purpose byways that are easily missed. On the Flaming Gorge-Uintas National Scenic Byway in Utah, a designated “scenic backway,” also known as the Sheep Creek Geologic Loop, provides spectacular views of the region’s geology, which is especially colorful when dressed in Autumn finery.

Thomas Dambo is a Danish artist who has a unique take on trolls. He creates giant, whimsical sculptures of trolls out of recycled materials. In Detroit Lakes, Minnesota’s city park, Alexa invites visitors to read her large wooden book of clues to discover the locations of other giant trolls in the area. The sculptures opened to the public in June 2024, and as people discover the location of the other trolls in the area, a scenic byway of sorts will be created. In the image, Alexa reaches into her portal to retrieve a magic spell while two youngsters look on. Other portals are up to 60 miles (97 km) from Alexa’s portal. However, All the trolls are much closer, within maybe 15 miles (24 km) from Alexa. The goal of the clues is to find the Golden Rabbit.

I couldn’t leave out my home state of North Dakota, where giant grasshoppers are set to devour our farmer’s crops. Well, maybe I exaggerate. In Western North Dakota, the Enchanted Highway winds from Gladstone to Regent, North Dakota. Along the way are several waystops with giant sculptures made from recycled metal. At one stop is a collection of grasshoppers called “Grasshoppers in the Field.” The tallest grasshopper sculpture, above, is 60 feet (18 m) long, with antennae reaching an additional 40 feet (12 m) high. This sculpture display features several grasshoppers of varying sizes. That’s my take on Leanne’s challenge this week. The gallery is on my Flickr site here where you can take a close-up look at the images in 2K HD on a black background.

Thank you, Leanne, for pinch-hitting so the Lens-Artists team can take our July break. Next week, Elizabeth of Albatz Travel Adventures challenges us to share our take on the theme, “Pairs.” If you’d like to join in with a response but aren’t sure how to get started, check here.

John Steiner