Making their way up the inclices of the Chickadee Ridge snowshoe after passing through the Tahoe Meadows South Trailhead, alongside Mt. Rose Highway approximately 15-miles south of Reno, Nevada. The trail is a 3 mile round trip with a 400-ft elevation gain at the clearing on Chickadee Ridge where you will encounter dozens of friendly tiny black, white, and gray Mountain Chickadees that inhabit the Sierra Nevada’s. (©2014 Brett Flashnick, All Rights Reserved)

Andrea Corskrey (cq), front, and Drew Bewley (cq), back, students from Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Ky., work on mapping a room inside of Crump’s Cave, near Smiths Grove, Ky., which is which contains a crystal blue, underground lagoon. The cave contains glyphs on the clay banks of a passage 1000 m from the entrance that is off limits to the general public. Bark from a deep incision in one of these figures produced a radiocarbon date of 30 B.C. ± 60 years (Haskins, 1994 personal communication). This date is especially significant because it is the only charcoal actually retrieved from within a glyph.

Gates Pass is a mountain pass along the crest of the Tucson Mountains. The road through the pass is a scenic route west of Tucson, Arizona. The elevation of the pass is 3,172 feet. The road is lined with scenic overlooks, and is an area where locals and visitors come to watch the sunset among the saguaro. (© 2015 Brett Flashnick, All Rights Reserved)

Tucson, Arizona is home to the America’s largest cacti. The giant saguaro is the universal symbol of the American west. These majestic plants, found only in a small portion of the United States, are protected by Saguaro National Park, to the east and west of the modern city of Tucson. Here you have a chance to see these enormous cacti, silhouetted by the beauty of a magnificent desert sunset. (© 2015 Brett Flashnick, All Rights Reserved)

© 2012 Brett Flashnick/All Rights Reserved