Travel with Rolando Chang Barrero

Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Photography by Rolando Chang Barrero Three Days of Solitude, Stone, and Sky My Time at Guadalupe Mountains National Park By Rolando Chang Barrero More from National Parks Service Welcome to Travel with Rolando! Subscribe to YouTube     Support me at Patreon Travel With Rolando Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Photography by Rolando Chang Barrero There are places you visit, and then there are places that quiet you down. Guadalupe Mountains National Park did exactly that for me. Tucked into far West Texas, where the desert stretches wide and the sky feels impossibly tall, this park offered me three days of pure serenity, physical challenge, and deep connection to the land. No crowds. No noise. Just wind, stone, and time slowing to a crawl. Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Photography by Rolando Chang Barrero   From the moment I arrived, I knew this wasn’t going to be a “check-the-box” national park visit. Guadalupe demands presence. I...

Walking the Landscape My Visit to the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas by Rolando Chang Barrero Welcome to Travel with Rolando! Subscribe to YouTube     Support me at Patreon Website    Video Short on YouTube Spending time at the Chinati Foundation is not a casual museum visit—it is an act of immersion. I spent several hours walking the grounds, slowing my pace, letting the West Texas light shift, and photographing Donald Judd ’s 15 Untitled Works in Concrete . The experience was physical, meditative, and deeply intentional. Installed between 1980 and 1984 , these monumental concrete forms are arranged across the open landscape of the former Fort D.A. Russell. Each work is distinct—variations in geometry, negative space, openings, and proportion—yet collectively they function as a single composition unfolding over distance and time. This is not sculpture meant to be glanced at. It is sculpture meant to be walked . As I moved from one structure to the next, the de...

Stories of Segregation: An American History Lesson A Visit to the Blackwell School National Historic Site, Marfa, Texas  by Rolando Chang Barrero More from National Parks Service Welcome to Travel with Rolando! Subscribe to YouTube     Support me at Patreon During my time in Marfa, Texas, I visited one of the newest and most powerful sites in the National Park Service system: Blackwell School National Historic Site . What I encountered there was not just a preserved building, but a deeply human story—one written by prejudice rather than law, and one that still echoes loudly today. Built in 1909 , the Blackwell School served Mexican and Mexican American children during an era of de facto segregation. Although segregation in Texas was not always codified in the same way it was in the Jim Crow South, the practice of “separate but equal” was firmly enforced through social norms, local policies, and institutional bias. From 1889 to 1965 , Mexican American students in Marfa w...

Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Preserve Florida Four Hours Inside the Quiet By Rolando Chang Barrero Travel with Rolando and Adventures with Bella More National Parks Welcome to Travel with Rolando! Subscribe to YouTube     Support me at Patreon I ended up spending more than four unhurried hours inside Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Preserve , and it still felt like I left too soon. This place doesn’t rush you. It quietly invites you to slow your breathing, soften your footsteps, and let your eyes adjust to subtleties—ripples in dark water, the flick of wings in the distance, the way light filters through sawgrass and cypress. With my camera in hand, time became irrelevant. I moved slowly along the boardwalks and levee trails, stopping often—not because something dramatic was happening, but because  nothing  was. The silence here isn’t empty; it’s layered. Birds announce themselves, insects hum like static in the air, and occasion...

Yesterday I spent the morning immersed in the quiet beauty of  Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Preserve , one of South Florida’s last remaining expanses of Everglades wetlands. Boardwalk trails cut through sawgrass marshes alive with birds, turtles, and the occasional alligator gliding silently through the water. The preserve offers a rare chance to slow down, breathe, and experience Florida as it once was—raw, peaceful, and deeply connected to the land. After soaking in the wetlands, I made a practical (and delicious) stop before hitting the road. At Bedner’s Farm , I stocked up on fresh, locally grown produce—ripe tomatoes, citrus, greens, and a few road-trip staples perfect for RV life. There’s something grounding about supporting a local farm and carrying fresh food with you as you travel; it turns the road into an extension of home. With the fridge full and the Everglades still on my mind, I rolled on feeling nourished in every sense. #Loxahatchee #Everglades...

Clawing Through the Night | Fear, Ghost Towns, and the Stay That Hooked Me By Rolando Chang Barrero Travel with Rolando and Adventures with Bella More National Parks and  State Parks Subscribe to YouTube     Support me at Patreon Enjoy the video!

Travel with Rolando to Yosemite National Park Traveling America’s national parks during a government shutdown comes with unexpected challenges. In this AARP article, writer Molly Snow follows my journey as a cross-country RVer navigating limited park staffing, uncertainty on the road, and a memorable two-hour traffic standstill leaving Yosemite National Park — all with my loyal travel companion, Bella, by my side. Braving national parks with limited staff  By Molly Snow is a writer for AARP These days, cross-country RVer Rolando Chang Barrero, 63, and his four-legged sidekick, Bella, are rarely in one place for long. ​​That is, of course, unless the retired Florida art gallerist is stuck in traffic for two hours on the way out of  Yosemite National Park.  That was his recent experience after the  shutdown . ​  Continue reading...