Adventures in the 63 Big Baddies
Greetings from Alturas, California! The motel is cheap and the smoke is thick, but we made it out the door and our Summer Adventures are well underway. I started this trip with every intention of updating (nearly) daily as we progressed from park to park, but good intentions are no match for the poor quality … More The Great Northwest Road Trip Begins! (er, began…)
We’ve been home for a couple weeks now and have had a little time to reflect on our trip. If we got to do it over again, would we do anything differently? Was there anything so awesome we’d do exactly the same thing again? Here are is a little collection of highlights and a very … More The Great Southwest Trip: the good, the fine, the bad, the ugly
Last stop on this trip! Florissant feels like it’s rather in the middle of nowhere, but what a beautiful nowhere! Canyons and valleys around every corner, hillsides swept with my beloved pines. … More Laura’s Journal: Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument
Aaaah!! This park is so cool and so infuriating!! The folks at Vermillion Cliffs NM didn’t even know the start of it when they described “demoralizing loose sand.” But, oh! How it’s made up for by the awesomeness of the sheer amount of sand. Of the height of sand. I’ve never seen dunes before, and I am smitten. … More Laura’s Journal: Great Sand Dunes National Park
Hello, Colorado! How much more like home you feel. I’ve missed my granites and pine trees. I do love to explore, but I will always be a mountain girl at heart. … More Laura’s Journal: Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
We arrived early but not quite early enough in Utah’s most iconic park. Pulling up at 8:05, we still wound up waiting about 20 minutes to get in through the entry gate. We stopped oh-so-briefly at the visitor’s center before heading all the way to the Devil’s Garden trailhead at the end of the scenic drive. We thought that by doing that first, skipping the more obvious stops at Balanced Rock and Delicate Arch, we might beat the crowds. Haha. We drove around the huge parking lot 6 times before we got lucky and found someone pulling out. … More Laura’s Journal: Arches National Park
What a big, gorgeous park that we barely got to scratch the surface of! We’ve been averaging 8 miles of hiking every day since the 29th when we headed down into the Grand Canyon, an average that includes my “day off” with less than 3 miles, and a chill day at Bryce Canyon with less than 4 miles. We’re tired. (Even Dustin. Maybe. A little.) … More Laura’s Journal: Canyonlands National Park
After the madness of Zion, Capitol Reef felt nearly deserted. We didn’t have to fight anyone for parking and sometimes spent entire minutes on the trails without seeing anyone else. I saw someone call this park Utah’s red-headed step child, but I don’t know why it should be. It’s smaller, yes, but it’s gorgeous (literally! see: Capital Gorge) and offers quite a lot of wonderful hikes. Maybe it’s a question of marketing? Before this trip, I knew Utah had five big, wonderful national parks, but I’d’ve been hard-pressed to name more than Zion and Arches. … More Laura’s Journal: Capitol Reef National Park
Bryce Canyon is apparently a very misunderstood park. Yesterday, on two separate occasions, we received bum reports about the place. First, a man we bumped into on one of Zion’s scenic overlooks told us we could “really just skip it.” He’d found it much less impressive and more crowded than Zion. “you’re just at the top of the canyon, and you can look down and, like, yep- there it is.” On the strength of this poor review, we did a little looking to see if maybe we should skip it and gain back a little of the time we lost (happily!) in the Grand Canyon. … More Laura’s Journal: Bryce Canyon
Rumors of Zion’s popularity (crowdedness) reached us well before we reached the park. We even watched an informational video about it (“remember: there are hikes other than Angel’s Landing and the Narrows! you should give them a try!”) We rolled into the park at 7:59, just before the entrance gate opened, and snagged one of the very few remaining parking spots in their vast parking lot. It was easy to see, as we drove the winding park road and went through the infinitely long tunnel carved out of solid rock, why this park is so popular. It is stunningly beautiful. … More Laura’s Journal: Zion National Park
Thither & Yon 