Getting out to Wyoming to visit one of America’s most famous parks was a huge undertaking for us this year. With the rapidly growing interest in national parks, reservations for activity passes or on-site lodging have to be reserved no less than 9 months in advance, sometimes earlier. When we planned out this trip and …
Like many of our remaining parks, Isle Royale takes a lot of planning. It’s not one where you can drop in unannounced. A small ship makes daily runs from the closer Minnesota side of Lake Superior, while a larger ship does the same from the further Michigan side. For the wealthy, seaplanes come and go …
This trip to St. Louis was a departure from our normal meticulous planning; instead, we made a hasty decision in late August to visit Gateway Arch over Labor Day, influenced by the looming season of colds and potential masking requirements. The plans for driving 11 hours out (and back) then became entangled with a Labor …
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 …