Afterthoughts about Goin’ West 2014
This is the map of my 16-day, Goin’ West 2014 trip: This surpassed my previously longest car trip from Grinnell to Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, by a whole 17 miles!! I stuck pretty closely to my original route, with some new additions–especially Little Bighorn National Park and North Cascades National Highway–and only two major deletions. After the magnificence of Yellowstone, I didn’t feel the need to deviate 250 miles from my westward trip to see Glacier National Park in Montana, although I’d heard many wonderful things about it. I also didn’t cross into Canada to visit Vancouver. The trip included visits to seven national parks: Little Bighorn (Montana), Yellowstone (Wyoming), North Cascade, Olympic, and Mount Rainier (Washington State), Redwood, and Yosemite (California). The parks were fantastic and more than worth the cost of the annual season pass. My favorites were Redwood and Yosemite, but none disappointed. There were other parks…
Day 7: From Olympia towards Rainier
Got off to a later-than-usual start. What the heck, I’m on vacation, aren’t I?! Any way, I decided to try to get in two national parks that day since both were near the Seattle area (greedy state–four national parks?!?). Really, the plan was to see one and complete the drive to the other so I could have all of the next day there. I made it to the outskirts of Olympic National Park and after chatting with the ranger at the visitor center, I realized there was no way I could do more than a cursory visit of the beach area on the park’s outer edge and still make the drive to Rainier that day. So, RB and I drove to Ocean City and a couple of other beaches. We had journeyed 2451 miles to see the Pacific Ocean. I didn’t get out, though. The air that afternoon was quite…