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…
Seven National Parks in Ten Days–Can It Be Done?
I’m not sure exactly when I became a fan of national parks, but I am one. I couldn’t wait to be able to get my senior pass, but now I have it I want to put it to good use. I had visited both Rocky Mountain NP and Zion NP with my mother in 2012, but I knew I’d missed four parks in Utah. What I didn’t know was that I’d missed three parks in Colorado, too. My original plan was to visit the Utah parks, the Four Corners Monument, which is on Native territory and had been closed due to COVID until recently, and the Glass Skywalk at the Grand Canyon. However, in the development of the trip, I discovered that the distance to the Skywalk is far greater than I had originally thought. With the current gas prices (average $4.50/gal. as I write this, I have to take…
Have Card, Will Travel
Now that I had SB and she had proven herself to be road worthy, I wanted to really put her to the test. Also, with my recent last birthday, I could now purchase a senior lifetime national park card, thus ending the annual card fees. The only thing I had to determine was whether there were any parks I hadn’t already visited that I could make happen in a weekend. Then, I remembered that I had not visited the Grand Teton National Park even though it had been just a few miles away from Yellowstone National Park during my northwestern United States in 2014 and didn’t realize how close I was at the time. The drive to Grand Teton was over 900 miles each way, and I was going to drive the round trip in basically two days! Plus, I was considering the possibility of a brief stop at Yellowstone–this…