Abandoned charcoal kilns sit in Wildrose Canyon in Death Valley National Monument. The 25-feet-tall (7.6-meter-tall) beehive-shaped kilns were built in 1877 by the Modock Consolidated Mining Company to produce charcoal for a nearby silver-lead smelting plant. The furnaces were closed after only about a year when deteriorating ore quality forced the silver mines to shut down.
According to the National Park Service, the kilns, which still smell of smoke, held up to 42 cords of pinyon pine logs and could produce 2,000 bushels of charcoal per week. Due to their short usage time and quality construction, they are considered among the best surviving examples of such kilns in the western United States.

Skiers dot the slopes in this night view of the Happo-One Ski Resort in the Japan Alps' Hida Range near Tokyo, Japan

Roads on Hawaii’s Big Island are often flanked with miles of "Island graffiti," like this love note. Instead of spray paint though, bits of white coral harvested from local beaches are arranged into messages, which seem to glow against the island's black lava expanses.

But tourists beware: Removing the coral from beaches is illegal. And disturbing an already-posted message is considered rude and supposedly brings bad luck

A watch vendor works within the confines of his hand-painted pushcart on a street in Kabul, Afghanistan.

The Afghan capital, which had been calm in the years following the 2001 ouster of the Taliban government, has been rocked lately by resurgent Taliban forces. Authorities have passed laws aimed at ridding the city of handcarts and donkey carts, which are often used by insurgents to hide explosive devices

A man sits in Paris's Tuileries Garden flanked by colorful model sailboats, which are rented out and sailed in the park's picturesque fountains.

Located in downtown Paris along the banks of the Seine, the gardens are built on the site of an old quarry where clay for tiles, or tuileries in French, was once mined.

Like the pillars at the entrance of an ancient Roman ruin, a stand of baobab trees frames a dirt road in Madagascar.
Found in the savannas of Africa and India, the baobab is a godsend to locals who use nearly every part of the tree for food, medicine, and even shelter.

Brown and blue blend as water from Ginnie Spring mixes with river water tinted by plant tannins. While this natural dye is harmless, man-made pollution clouds the future of these fountains—a fact Floridians must now confront.
Florida's 320 natural springs gush out over eight billion gallons of drinkable water every day. How these springs work, where the water comes from, and the ways in which they are all connected remain mysterious, but scientists and underwater explorers are working to change that

A pair of gaily painted domesticated elephants regard one another in a Jaipur park in India.
Asian elephants have been domesticated for thousands of years. Used primarily for ornament and entertainment today, domesticated elephants have been used for moving cargo, felling trees, transporting caravans, and even waging war in centuries past

Firemen with lighted helmets use controlled fires to clear brush during a wildfire in California’s Santa Lucia Range. Forest fires—man-made and natural—are so common here that Big Sur naturalist John Smiley calls them “another type of weather.”

A buck mule deer contrasts against the rye grasses of the Alvord Desert in southeastern Oregon. Few inhabit this bleak expanse; in fact, early settlers found it so inhospitable they called it "Malheur," or misfortune.
Today's residents enjoy the desert's challenges. Few and far apart, they appreciate how its environment denies most features, such as congestion, of modern life

Falling water levels expose a sandbar in the Great Lakes’ St. Clair River.
The five Great Lakes, and the rivers, channels, and lesser lakes that connect to them, hold a fifth of the world’s surface fresh water. But below-average precipitation, increased evaporation due to above-average temperatures, and mounting water consumption is driving water levels here to record lows.

A spring blizzard blankets Calgary with snow. Born as a cow town, Calgary boomed with later discoveries of rich oil and gas fields in Alberta

Throngs of people fill Memphis' Beale Street, famed for its many bars and clubs frequented by some of the greatest names in blues music. As African Americans migrated north from the fields to the cities after the abolition of slavery, their route came to be known as the "blues highway." The port city of Memphis was the first major stop along the way, becoming a spawning ground for blues, jazz, and rock-and-roll

Parisians celebrate the Great Revolution of 1789 in the Place de la Bastille on July 14th. In the center of the plaza stands the Colonne de Juillet, a monument to those who died during the 1830 and 1848 revolts

An old-style Mexican hotel (right) pales beneath the gleaming blue-tiled domes of the upscale Riverside Lodge in Batopilas, Mexico. This century-old hacienda, formerly a local merchant's home, was meticulously restored by an American businessman in the early 1990s, just as the Mexican government was beginning a push to make the country's Copper Canyons region a major tourist destination