Oregon is a wonderful state! We’ve known this since our first trip here six years ago when we flew out to Portland and then drove through the Willamette Valley (Oregon wine country) over to the coast to Yachats to attend girlfriend Chris’s wedding. Incidentally, that was our first vacation together [August 2009; we had been dating for four …
May 25-27 — Four days, although full ones, simply weren’t enough to really visit Yosemite National Park, so after we spent a lovely weekend visiting friends and connecting more with city life, we routed ourselves back into some more remote areas of Yosemite we hadn’t gotten to see the first time around. Our first excursion found us …
“It is by far the grandest of all the special temples of NatureI was ever permitted to enter.” John Muir on seeing Yosemite May 16-20, 2015 — Many people have asked us which national park is our favorite of all of the parks we’ve visited. Up until this point, I’d have to think about the …
May 13-15 — Giant trees. Towering mountains. Dramatic canyons. This is the Sierra Nevada, the area in which we are staying for nearly three weeks as we explore three more of our country’s magnificent national parks. The vastness and beauty of this place is hard to comprehend. The Sierra Nevada range is larger than the French, Swiss, …
May 8-12 — This is the land of the giants – Giant Sequoia trees, that is. And wow, are they giants; some of the largest living things on earth! Sequoia National Park is one of three national parks found in the Sierra Nevada, a mountain range that runs some 400 miles north-to-south along the eastern …
October 27 – 31 — Just 75 miles west of Washington D.C., in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, lies Shenandoah National Park. This park was established in the 1920s and ’30s as a response to the development of large national parks in the West. With automobiles making getaways from big cities possible (‘within a day’s drive …
Words can’t begin to describe the scenery we saw yesterday while hiking in Baxter State Park in northern Maine. We spent seven hours in the park; hiked three different trails in the park – two of them part of the Appalachian Trail; hiked just short of eight miles in total. Our reward at the end …
September 7th – Our alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. and we were up and at ’em. Today’s the day we’re hiking Mount Washington, considered to be the most prominent mountain east of the Mississippi River. Truth be told, I was a little bit intimidated by this big sucker and I just wanted to get on with …
August 25 – On the recommendation of a couple of people we met three weeks ago, we came up to Ricketts Glen – a state park in northern Pennsylvania. They sold us on the promise of an epic hike that takes you alongside 21 waterfalls – you hike down one creek to where the two …
