We’re setting the compass for the eastern edge of the Gorge this month, out where the wind gnaws at the basalt cliffs and the Columbia carves its eternal scar through the land. The plan is simple, deranged, and perfectly American: start at a fake Stonehenge built by a railroad baron who thought pouring concrete in the shape of druids’ nightmares was a good way to honor the dead boys of World War I… and then stagger downhill into a museum packed with Rodins, chess sets, and Romanian icons all because one man couldn’t stop throwing his money at impossible dreams.

Stonehenge first. You can almost hear the ghosts rattling out there in the wind, farm trucks rolling by like spectral juggernauts. Sam Hill’s vision still stands bleached, cracked, indestructible. He built it as a warning against human sacrifice, but the universe laughs, and the wars kept coming. Now the tourists pull up in Subarus, take their Instagram shots, and drive off with the same hollow look in their eyes. That’s where we’ll start: surrounded by concrete druids, staring into the river’s endless churn, waiting for the sky to crack open.

Then comes Maryhill. A museum in the middle of nowhere, perched like a hallucination above the Gorge. Rodin’s Thinker stares at you, daring you to come up with a better plan for this broken planet. Glass cases stuffed with artifacts from forgotten empires, fashion mannequins from Paris, beadwork stitched by hands long gone. All of it mashed together like the fever dream of a man who didn’t know when to stop. Sam Hill called it civilization on the edge of nowhere, and that’s exactly how it feels.

This is not just another road trip. It’s a pilgrimage into the mad logic of American ambition: build a Stonehenge, fill a mansion with art, and leave the rest of us to figure out what it means. Later this month, we dive into it headlong and camera bags loaded, notebooks ready, wide eyes peeled for the moment where myth and reality collide on the high desert cliffs of Washington.

Stay tuned.