Driving through Nevada it’s easy to believe
Category: Travel
Travel: Perspective in Death Valley
Death Valley is many places. They all provide perspective. March 2018.
Travel: Yurt Camping in Goblin Valley
When yurt camping in Goblin Valley, the sun and clouds provide a constant show. March 2018.
Travel: Cape Blanco Cabin Camping and a Farewell
Back in May, Chad and I traveled through Oregon and made a stop at Cape Blanco State Park, on the coast. We arrived at the park in early evening to a cool and cloudy 53 degrees. The campground is nestled into a forest populated mainly by giant, spooky looking Sitka Spruce trees. The forest is dense…
Travel: Idaho Sheepherder Wagon
One of the most interesting spots we’ve stayed in during our travels together was in a little sheepherder wagon in Idaho. We were on our way to the zone of Totality during the 2017 Eclipse, and this ended up being a nice stopover on the way to our destination. And yes, everything else was already…
Travel: Wickliffe Mounds, Kentucky
Our last side-trip on our way to Nashville was a prehistoric site in Kentucky, the Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site. Chad did most of the work looking for sightseeing stops for us on our trip and he did a great job coming up with good variety…
Travel: Driving through Missouri and Illinois
Taking a long cross country trip has its good sides and its bad sides. On the less comfortable side, it can be hard to stay seated all day long. You get to that point where you forget about it for awhile and then you make a stop, get out of the car and realize how stiff you are, what a relief it is to stretch…
Travel: Mark Twain State Park
We stayed the night in a cabin at the Mark Twain State Park. We got in a little late and may have woken up some fellow campers which I felt bad about but c’est la vie. It’s pretty cool that many campgrounds offer a few cabins for those who don’t want the full blown camping experience of sleeping in a tent…
Travel: Driving through Nebraska
Driving through Nebraska brought some very Nebraska-esque sites, like covered wagons. And then there was the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument. Quite a surprise when you’re not expecting a giant archway over the interstate!
Travel: Pony Express Station In Gothenburg Nebraska
Our next destination was the Pony Express Station in the town of Gothenburg, Nebraska. It was nestled into a cute little neighborhood with historic craftsman houses. I enjoyed seeing different types of residential neighborhoods throughout our trip, and this was one of the cutest ones…
Travel: Driving through Wyoming
We passed a giant oil refinery somewhere outside of Rawlins…
Travel: Rawlins, Wyoming
Part of the reason we picked the motel we did in Wyoming was that it had an interesting cliff behind it. It was a Rodeway Inn – looked like a motel on the outside, felt more like a hotel on the inside. The last motel we had stayed in together was kind of gross – it smelled like smoke and was a little dingy – so we were relieved that this one was pretty comfortable. And it matched my car…
Travel: Salt Lake City, Utah to Rawlins, Wyoming
This summer Chad and I set out on an 11 day road trip, driving to Nashville and back. No, we weren’t going to check out the Country Music capital of the world, we were just going to a family reunion. We thought we’d make a vacation out of it rather than just fly in for a day and a half and then fly back…
Travel: Shiprock New Mexico
Last year on our trek across the country, we took a detour to go see Shiprock. This plan came about one day on our trip while Chad was studying the map. He said something like, “One possibility if we go through New Mexico would be to stop and see Shiprock.” I’m sure my eyes lit…
Travel: Going West
Around a year ago I went to the airport to meet in person, for the first time, a man who I’d met online and had been writing to for a little over two months. Our letters to each other made me feel like I’d found the friend I’d always longed for and the romantic partner…
Travel: Cool Night in Mancos
Waking up in Chaco was hot, really hot, so it was a relief to finish out the day in the cool evergreen forest at Mancos State Park, Colorado. The next day before we hit the road we had a fun time doing some yoga, taking photos and relaxing. As ready as I was to get…
Travel: Drive through Southern Utah
As we made our tired way along the last leg of our 2016 cross-country odyssey (day 10!), I was thrilled to snap photos of the amazing scenery in Southeastern Utah. These landscapes always make me feel that I should be seeing big cats roam along them, as if they belong in Africa or southeast Asia….
Travel: Chaco National Heritage Park, New Mexico
The road to get there was 21 miles of washboard purgatory (why not hell? well, we didn’t know if we would ever arrive…), but the arrival was cool moonlight silhouettes of astounding buttes. Coyotes howled all night and the burning sun woke us in the morning. This was my first real experience of the desert.
Travel: Oasis State Park, New Mexico
I got some good driving time in on the RV going from southwest Oklahoma to northeast New Mexico. The roads were nice and straight, which made for smoother sailing in the RV (which over 55mph often felt like a boat rocking on a troubled sea), and I started to relax a bit driving such a behemoth….
Travel: Wichita Wildlife Refuge, Oklahoma
The Wichita Wildlife Refuge was one of the few destinations that were on our original travel plan that we actually made it to. It was exciting to be arriving just around sunset and to have a wide choice of campsites to pick from. Also, we were finally out of the humid forests of the Southeast…
Travel: Tishimingo Morning
Arriving at Tishomingo State Park in Mississippi late on the second day of our cross-country honeymoon trip was exciting because I was out of known territory. The camp sites were nestled in around a lake, and we drove around in the dark trying to pick the best one (ie, the one that was both close…
Travel: Late Arrival at Victoria Bryant State Park
Our first stop on our cross-country trip was Victoria Bryant State Park. This was not where we had planned to stay, but once we got on the road, we quickly realized we weren’t going to make the 10pm gate closing at Fort Mountain State Park in Georgia. (Note to fellow travelers, 10pm seems to be…
Travel: Charlotte NC to Utah, the Southern Route
After making the big decision to get married and move me across the country, we had to decide what route we would take getting there. Earlier that June we had driven a quick, direct line from Utah to NC passing through Kansas. This time we wanted more parks to stay in on our trip. Our…
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