After a visit to New River Gorge National Park, we traveled about 9 hours northwest to reach Portage, IN, just outside Indiana Dunes. These dunes have been on our radar for a while, and they are yet another park in a 20-hour driving radius from Charlotte (my current personal limit for road trips). This was …
New River Gorge is the second closest national park to Charlotte (closer than the Great Smoky Mountains but not as close as Congaree) and yet it’s taken us a while to visit. It’s the newest national park (thank you President Trump) and by all reports, a lovely natural area featuring one of the world’s oldest …
We had a grand ol’ time at the Grand Canyon! It is truly GRAND! This was our grandest trip yet, a cross-country expedition to see America’s most famous national park! All jokes aside, this trip was no joke. We flew into Phoenix on Sunday, and after stops in Saguaro National Park and Petrified Forest National …
From Phoenix, we traveled north to the Petrified Forest, an unusual area of colorful mesas and ancient fossilized trees about 100 miles east of Flagstaff. We had low expectations and ended up pleasantly surprised! The park is long and narrow, like Shenandoah, with one main road going from top to bottom. We arrived at the …
The Arizona national parks have been on our radar ever since my sister Mary moved there two years ago from Cleveland. You might remember that Mary also visited Cuyahoga Valley with us when she lived in Ohio! In 2021 Mary and I daydreamed about visiting Saguaro together, and we shopped the Madewell x Parks Project …
We have worked our way up in size and popularity of caves, from Linville Caverns, NC –> Luray Caverns, VA –> Mammoth Cave, KY –> now, Carlsbad Caverns, NM. Carlsbad is such a big attraction that we had to settle on an exact date and time for our visit months in advance, in order to …
We’ve been intimidated by Guadalupe Mountains for a while. Despite its beautiful Spanish name, the park is actually a vaguely menacing range of flinty mountains. We arrived on a mild December day to find a harsh wind whipping past the visitor center. We were blown around an embarrassingly short trail and then retreated to our …
White Sands was the second park on our recent trip out to Texas. We left Big Bend Friday morning (Christmas Eve) and drove up to El Paso, stopping at Fort Davis along the way. With sundown being early and restaurants closing for the holiday, it was a fun rush to pick up groceries and dinner …
We drove to Texas to avoid being stranded at the El Paso airport. Originally we were going to fly into El Paso a few days before Christmas, rent a vehicle, loop down to Big Bend, and then head north to a few other national parks around the TX/NM border, but after a few too many …
While Hot Springs originally seemed a bit out of reach (13 hours from Charlotte), we seized the chance to stop by on our way to Greg’s family reunion in Tennessee this year. In the interest of gaining more states on our scratch-off map, we planned a circuitous route going from Charlotte -> Atlanta -> Birmingham …