I love a good roadside attraction.

The weirder, the better.

I spent about 17 years playing music all over the place, which meant a LOT of time in cars, vans, strange towns, truck stops, questionable hotels and long stretches of highway.

And somewhere along the way, I developed a rule:

If there is something weird to see, stop and see it.

The World’s Largest Nickel?

I’m interested.

Cadillac Ranch?

Pull over.

A building shaped like something a building absolutely does not need to be shaped like?

We have ten minutes.

Because really — isn't that part of the whole point of traveling?

You can drive straight from Point A to Point B.

Or you can occasionally turn off the road and see what humans have been up to.

Which brings me to this week's Beauty Beyond.

Seven Giant Piles of neon rocks in the desert.

About ten miles south of Las Vegas, out in the Mojave Desert, you'll suddenly encounter Seven Magic Mountains.

And subtle, they are not.

Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone created seven enormous towers made from locally sourced boulders, stacked vertically and painted in wildly bright, dayglow colors. Each tower rises roughly 30 to 35 feet into the desert sky.

Pink.

Yellow.

Blue.

Orange.

Green.  

Uhm. that's all the colors of Ella Vatour.  Yes please.  LOL

All of it sitting against the muted browns of the Mojave, surrounded by mountains and endless sky.

It looks a little like Mother Nature left the room and somebody immediately got into the paint.

And I mean that as a compliment.

But there’s actually an idea behind all that neon.

The location is part of the artwork.

Rondinone chose a spot that sits, both physically and conceptually, between two worlds.

On one side: mountains, desert and the dry lake bed.

On the other: highway, cars, infrastructure and Las Vegas — one of the most intentionally artificial environments humans have ever dreamed up.

Rondinone has described the site as existing between the natural and the artificial, with the sculpture becoming this giant burst of human presence inside the landscape.

And suddenly those giant fluorescent rocks make a lot more sense.

They're rocks.

But they're very obviously our rocks now.

😂

Look how HUGE they are in comparison to the people standing next to them:

It was only supposed to be there for two years.

Seven Magic Mountains opened in May 2016 as a public art installation produced by the Nevada Museum of Art and Art Production Fund.

Originally, it was expected to remain for only two years.

People apparently had other plans.

The installation became so popular that its run was repeatedly extended, and as of September 2026, Seven Magic Mountains remains open to the public.

Which makes me happy.

Because I think we need things like this.

Things that exist partly because someone imagined them and then had the nerve to actually make them.

Take the extra ten minutes.

This may be my actual takeaway from this week's Beauty Beyond.

When you travel, take the extra ten minutes to see the odd thing.

Pull off the highway.

Read the weird historical marker.

Go see the world's largest whatever.

Walk over to the giant statue.

Find out why someone buried ten Cadillacs nose-first in the ground.

Stand in front of seven fluorescent towers of rocks in the Nevada desert and think:

Well, I'm glad somebody did this.

Not everything we experience has to be one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Sometimes the little detour becomes the story you remember.

And I think exploring the world is partly about giving yourself permission to be curious enough to take it.

BEAUTY BEYOND

Seven Magic Mountains isn't trying to blend into the landscape.

It is loud.

Artificial.

Colorful.

A little absurd.

And surrounded by all this enormous, quiet desert.

Maybe that's exactly why it works.

Nature made the rocks.

Humans added neon.

And somewhere between the two, somebody created something worth pulling over for.

So if you ever see something weird just off the highway?

Take the exit.

I encourage it.

Til the next one,

BrookeLynn