We had finished up at Joshua Tree and had a few days to kill before we were meeting up with friends come the weekend. Where to go next? We pulled out the various maps and apps and discovered a spot…
Joshua Tree National Park
Wow. Just Wow! We had no preconceived notions of what Joshua Tree National Park would be like. When you visit to Yellowstone, you expect geysers. When you visit the Everglades, you expect swamps and alligators. When you visit Joshua Tree,…
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
When you hear the word “Badlands”, we all think of the famous Badlands in South Dakota. Well, it turns out there are more Badlands than those. We discovered other Badlands when we were at Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada.…
West Yellowstone
I did a little research about what lay eastward when we left Boise and found in one of my guide books a reference to Earthquake Lake in West Yellowstone, Montana (the town, not the National Park). That sounded interesting. Let’s…
Bend, Oregon
We had heard good things about Bend, Oregon over the years. So we decided to make it our next destination. At the end of our three days, we decided that three days was NOT enough time to explore the area. …
Columbia River Bar
We spent a lovely couple of days exploring the Columbia River Bar. This is where the Columbia River, which divides Washington State from Oregon, exits to the Pacific Ocean. It is a system of bars and shoals, forever shifting. It…
Mt. Saint Helens…again
In August, 2017, when Janelle and I were in Portland, Oregon visiting Callie, Janelle and I visited the Mt. Saint Helens National Volcanic Monument and the David Johnston Observatory (read about that visit here). Jim had never seen Mt. Saint…
Mt. Rainier National Park
What can one say? Our country’s fifth National Park is stunning. It rivals Glacier National Park for beauty. The park is dominated by a single peak, the volcano known as Mt. Rainier. Mt. Rainier is covered with glaciers that are…
Smoke in the Canadian Rockies
We have been really looking forward to visiting the Canadian Rockies again. Visiting the Canadian Rockies was the first big trip we took in 2014 after buying the Blue Flame. Alas, we weren’t going to get the blue skies and…
Dinosaur Provincial Park
What was our reward for getting across the country of Canada as fast as we could? Dinosaurs! Dinosaur Provincial Park is located in one of Canada’s Badlands. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. From Wikipedia: “A World Heritage site…