Cliffs of insanity: Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
June 11, 2023 After kicking off our national parks tour at Great Sand Dunes in southern Colorado, we headed west to another park we’d never visited: Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. The thrillingly steep canyon walls, black and forbidding, so sheer the sun rarely touches both sides at ...
Kicking off our western national parks tour at Great Sand Dunes
June 08, 2023 Exploring national parks has always been one of our family’s favorite vacation activities. You get to immerse yourself in awe-inspiring landscapes, hike scenic trails, see wildlife like bears and bison, eagles and prairie dogs, and just soak up the beauty of the land. This spring my husband ...
Golden trees and black bears in Great Smoky Mountains and Cades Cove
November 28, 2022 On Halloween, we sought the warm colors of autumn — pumpkin orange, harvest gold, bonfire red — along the Blue Ridge Parkway and in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which straddles the North Carolina-Tennessee border. And we found them too, despite the lateness of the leaf-peeping season, ...
Bandelier cliff dwellings, Valles Caldera, and epic New Mexico scenery
November 13, 2022 In early September, at the end of our trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, we drove out to Bandelier National Monument. We’d last explored its ancient cliff dwellings and pueblo ruin two decades earlier, and we wanted to hike and see it again. Bandelier National Monument We ...
Wild ponies and birds on Chincoteague and Assateague Island
March 22, 2022 My big road trip last fall kicked off on September 30th in Portland, Maine. Eighteen days and 2,200 miles later, I cruised along Virginia’s Eastern Shore and across Chincoteague Bay to Chincoteague Island. Yes, the island made famous by the beloved 1947 children’s book Misty of Chincoteague ...
View from a cinder cone at Capulin Volcano National Monument
August 16, 2021 Capulin Volcano, a decapitated pyramid, rises improbably over the grassy plains of northeastern New Mexico. A driver eager for a roadside distraction in the middle of nowhere might be tempted to exit Highway 87 for a closer look. Somehow, though, despite cruising past Capulin Volcano National Monument ...
Remembering Dred Scott on Juneteenth at Gateway Arch in St. Louis
June 19, 2021 Today is Juneteenth, our newest national holiday, which commemorates the end of slavery. Short for June 19th, Juneteenth has long been celebrated by African American communities in Texas. On June 19, 1865, enslaved people in Texas were finally told, two months after the Civil War had ended, ...
Finger-pointing cacti at Saguaro National Park
August 07, 2020 If you’re feeling ticked off about the covid state of the world, Saguaro National Park might be the perfect place to go, since its namesake flora look like they’re giving the finger to the universe. Saguaro was the last park we visited during our family road trip ...
Otherworldly trees and rocks at Joshua Tree National Park
August 03, 2020 Oh hi! Let’s pop back into the national park road trip. From the central coast of California, back in late June, we headed home to Austin via a more southerly route than our outbound one. We zipped through Los Angeles — regretful that the pandemic prevented any ...
Wildflowers and wildlife in Yosemite meadow
July 21, 2020 Milkweed and a monarch butterfly in Cook’s Meadow While the sheer cliffs and towering waterfalls of Yosemite National Park tend to get all the attention, Cook’s Meadow in the valley is also beautiful. During our June visit (click here for how we pulled off our socially distanced ...
Earthshaking thrills at Yosemite’s Half Dome
July 17, 2020 Half Dome as seen from Cook’s Meadow On Day 2 of our June Yosemite visit (click here for part 1 and here for how we pulled off the trip), we rose well before dawn, drove the 40 minutes into the park, and dropped David off at the ...
Yosemite National Park, grand temple of nature
July 14, 2020 An epic vista, including El Capitan on the left and Half Dome in the distance, greets you at the Tunnel View pullout. Half Dome. El Capitan. Tuolumne Meadows. Yosemite Falls. The names of Yosemite’s majestic granite walls, grassy leas, and thundering waterfalls are more familiar to many ...
Wildflowers and waterfalls at Kings Canyon National Park
July 12, 2020 Eriodictyon parryi, or poodle dog bush When you visit Sequoia National Park in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, you get two parks for the price of one. Kings Canyon National Park abuts Sequoia’s northern edge, and the parks are managed together; one admission gets you into both. It’s ...
Bears and giant trees at Sequoia National Park
July 08, 2020 After detouring to visit the Grand Canyon in Arizona (see our route in my previous post), we continued westward through California’s sere Mojave Desert. At last the land rose and formed the Golden State’s crinkled, tawny hills, stubbled with spreading, olive-green live oaks. By mid-afternoon we’d reached ...
Grand views at Grand Canyon
July 07, 2020 We steered clear of crowded lookout points like this one at Grand Canyon. In the before-times, a summer road trip was a pleasurable, even adventurous, undertaking. In the covid era it feels almost miraculous to pull off any kind of travel while adhering to federal and local ...
Sunny southern France vacation, part 2
August 22, 2019 Dodging the heat waves that plagued France this summer, my husband and I day-tripped through Provence for 5 days in late July after meeting up with our daughter following her study abroad program (she did not manage to dodge the heat waves). In my last post I ...
