Two National Parks
Since I retired, I am more inclined to indulge my impulses and hop onto the road with little or no advanced planning. This is what happened when I literally woke up one morning and decided to visit the closest national park to the area. I had just gotten a 35 mm digital camera and wanted to give it a test-run at a site where I could find distance and closeup scenery to photograph. Shenandoah National Park I entered Shenandoah National Park from the southern part of Virginia with the idea of working my way north so that drive home would be shorter. Although this was an impulse trip, I still took the time beforehand to check the web and get information about the park so I could be prepared for it. I exited I-64 and entered the southernmost point of Skyline Drive. I do wish that I’d gone by the…
Gateway Arch NP-Backtracking
I *knew* I had taken pictures during my 2010 trip to the Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis, Missouri. I found the ones posted here on my Facebook page. I’m still hopeful that I will find the rest on the camera I used or the computer to which I uploaded them. Unfortunately, the only things I can say about the visit are that I had also hoped to go on a riverboat tour on the Mississippi, but the river was flooded. None of the riverboats were offering trips to tourists. Also, there was an air show during my visit. The newstory about the show helped me place the date of my visit as July 4th. I got some photos of the show from inside the Arch–as well as of downtown St. Louis–and some from the ground. I hope that I will get a chance to go again at the…
A Quick Trip–Voyageurs NP (Day Three)
Juneteenth morning found me about two hours away from my destination, Voyageurs National Park. Still, I got there, or what I thought was there, around 7 a.m. I took advantage of the time to get online–yes, I had wifi there-slow but there–to get information about the park. I discovered that a boat tour was available and there was one ticket left for the morning tour. Shortly after purchasing the ticket, a gentleman informed me that the park tour was located at another part of Rainy Lake. Fortunately, it wasn’t far away and only a matter of giving Waze a slightly different destination name, Rainy Lake Visitor Center, to get to the correct location. I saw a cute little chipmunk on the log building stoop, but mostly I saw and provided meals for lots of mosquitoes along with dead dragonflies, which I learned later are called mayflies. The ranger I spoke…
A Quick Trip–Theodore Roosevelt NP (Day Two)
Theodore Roosevelt National Park is made up of three “units” in western North Dakota. I reached the town of Medora and the entrance to the Southern unit around 6:45 a.m. Sunday morning. Since the visitors’ center was not scheduled to open until 9:00, I sat in the Silver Bullet and started reading to kill the time. Fortunately, a ranger saw me there, and he kindly gave me a map of the park and suggested I not wait to drive the scenic route (BTW, I had already informed him that I had my senior pass so the entry fee was not an issue). He said that the badlands provided stunning views whether I stayed in the car or hiked the available trails. I’m so glad I took his advice. The early morning was beautiful with clear skies–a concern I had had about the entire trip with the smoke from forest fires…
A Three-Day Tour… of National Parks
I’ve been back from my three-day tour of Theodore Roosevelt National Park and Voyageurs National Park for two days at the point I created this post, and both parks are still on my mind. What an impression each made on me in such a short time! Folks crowd onto Yellowstone, Yosemite and other big parks–and with good reason. But they miss out on the various wonders of the small- to mid-size parks. Below is the map of the entire 2,235 mile trip: More about each park in separate posts, but I wanted to briefly update the complete list of national parks to include the ones I recently visited. I’ve bolded those that I have visited as of today and added links to the blogs where I’ve described the visits. Acadia Arches Badlands Big Bend Biscayne Black Canyon of the Gunnison Bryce Canyon Canyonlands Capitol Reef Carlsbad Caverns Channel Islands Congaree…
A Final Crack at Glacier National Park
Glacier National Park is at the top of my NP Bucket List. It suddenly occurred to me that I might have an opportunity this month to make a quick trip there along with at least one other park before I leave Iowa. While Juneteenth is a federal holiday now, it’s not a national holiday. I’m hoping that means the park–one of the most popular ones in the system–will not be at overflow levels that weekend. I have two routes to consider. The first and most likely to be feasible would be to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota then across to Montana and Glacier. Under the category of wishful thinking is to add another stop to Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota. This would add another day to the trip because the route from Voyageurs is all state roads rather than almost all interstate driving if I don’t go there.…
The DMV and Indiana Dunes NP
As I mentioned in earlier posts, I am in the process of relocating to the DC Metro area, otherwise known as the DMV, so I’m closer to family and away from the winters of Iowa. I had two primary goals for this trip: one, to find a place to stay and two, celebrate the publication of Recorded Solo Concert Spirituals with my family. I think I found an apartment in the area that would be available when I need it, but I won’t know for sure until September. By Friday, I was able to take time to get my hair professionally done (I could almost hear the strands singing “thank you” afterwards) and visit my cousins on my mother’s side of the family. Then, on Saturday, I met colleague and former vocal coach Millicent Scarlett-Smith for lunch to catch up. Somehow, although I hadn’t planned on it, she left lunch…
The Singin’ Tourist in the SW USA (Afterthoughts)
It’s hard to believe that it has been a month since I finally made this trip that has been on my wish list for a decade. And what a difference a decade makes! I still don’t feel like I’ve fully recovered from the trip. Yet, I’m already contemplating one more venture while I’m still in Iowa. This time, I want to visit Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana. I was close to visiting it in the summer of 2018, but from Missoula I had to decide to go 250 miles due north to Glacier or continue on my originally planned route towards Seattle. Time and budget–and just finishing an incredible visit to Yellowstone NP–were the deciding factors. Now, though, I’ve got the option of taking Amtrak there or driving the Silver Bullet. It will be hard to leave the car and the freedom to change plans, but I admit that…
The Singin’ Tourist in the SW USA (Day 5)
Another beautiful day! This map displays all four national parks I visited during the trip: Bryce Canyon (I), Capitol Reef (J), Canyonlands (K), and Arches (L). I entered the Canyonlands National Park on Friday morning. It seemed like every time I pulled out of one turnoff after taking pictures, I would pull off the road yet again at the next one to take more pictures of the different scenes. I was also very fortunate that I could take advantage of the accessible parking that regularly placed me close enough to sites to either get great pictures or to get out and have a fairly short walk to those views. I’m not going to try to describe what I saw with words. Rather, I’m going to let the pictures express their thousand words. Oh, one more thing, as usual, clicking on any of the pictures in the galleries should give you…
The Singin’ Tourist in the SW USA (Day 4)
Utah has five national parks. I’ve previously visited Zion National Park, so my game plan was to try to visit the remaining four parks during this trip. However, one thing had to be taken into account. Utah is a big state in area, and the roads between the parks were not exactly direct or were they going to be interstate highways. My best hope was to reach two per day with the goal of heading to Four Corners Monument by late Friday. My luck with weather continued to hold. That’s an understatement. Even the days that started chilly enough to need a jacket warmed enough as the day progressed to allow me to shed the jacket.That morning, though, I needed to start the day wearing both my scarf and wool cap for additional protection. As I often do, I chose a scenic route through Bryce Canyon National Park so I…