how much beauty there is even in places others denigrate.
Amen! The deserts of New Mexico are especially beautiful to me, though a lot of the Arizona deserts are too, in a different way. Having been raised in west Texas where, as I used to tell my Ohio cousin, there are "miles and miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles and miles," nearly every kind of terrain is beautiful to me, one way or another, even the Llano Estacado (Staked Plains) of Texas. The ugliest places are those messed up by man, whether it's the concrete jungles or the air pollution, or whatever. That's not saying I LIKE all the places -- I don't care much for big water or ocean shores and beaches -- just that they are beautiful to look at.
My sister-in-law grew up in Estes Park (her folks ran some tourist cabins) and has some occasionally less than flattering tales of tourists, such as one woman who, when she saw the Rockies, exclaimed that she didn't see what was so special about a bunch of rocks, and she wanted to go home to the big city.
I was extremely fortunate that, as a kid we not only moved a lot (12 different schools), but took a lot of vacations far from home, from D.C. to Crescent City, CA, so I saw much of the U.S. before I was even in high school, and spent a lot of time in north central Kansas (my Dad's folks on a fram) and southern Illinois (Mom's folks in a small town), spending the night with relatives in Philly, D.C. (uncle in the Air Force), Crescent City (uncle in CA), just to name a few, and we saw the Grand Canyon, the Great Salt Lake, Mt. Vernon, the Liberty Bell, the Geographical Center Of The United States (until 1959, now Continental US), camped (tent) in the Rockies, and more.
'Twas all pretty, in one way or another, though the big cities were (to me) the least of it. And that was all before Interstate highways and RVs (that I knew about).
I feel sorry for those who can't see beauty in even the most "bleak" of places. Liking it is, of course, another story.