Travel dates: April 3, 2018 If you stand on Jekyll Island‘s Driftwood Beach and look north, you can see the lighthouse of Jekyll’s bigger, more congested neighbor, St. Simons. St. Simons is another of the four barrier islands that make up Georgia’s “Golden Isles” (the others are Little St. Simons and Sea Island), and we […]
Lassen Volcanic National Park: Hey, What Do You Know? Even MORE Volcanoes!
Travel dates: July 1, 2017 The party line on Lassen Volcanic National Park is that it’s a hidden gem–an amazing but underappreciated spot where one can go to soak up natural wonders while escaping the crowds. Lassen Peak itself is a huge plug dome volcano which erupted most recently in 1915. The park is one […]
Lava Beds National Monument: Fun with Volcanoes Continued!
Travel dates: June 29-30, 2017 Not many people make it to the remote northeastern corner of California to see Lava Beds National Monument, but the ones who do are rewarded with low crowds and a bunch of really cool caves to explore. And maybe with one of their favorite photos from their whole summer trip: […]
Believe the Hype: Crater Lake is Really, Really Blue
Travel date: June 28, 2017 At Crater Lake National Park, in very late June, we encountered the most snow any of us had ever seen in one place in our lives. We were looking forward to doing a boat tour of Crater Lake. Maybe hiking Wizard Island, the small island in the middle of the […]
Craters of the Moon National Monument and the Arco KOA
Travel dates: June 23-24, 2017 We had had a long day getting to Arco, Idaho, complete with nearly 300 miles of driving, a monster traffic jam, and a stop at our beloved Museum of Clean. Rarely have we been as happy to see a campground as we were to see the Craters of the Moon/Arco KOA that […]
Colter Bay RV Park in Grand Teton National Park: Campground Review
We drove by a lot of no hook-ups National Park campgrounds last summer, and I spent a lot of time gazing at them wistfully, feeling sad because we’re just not set up for dry camping. And then driving for half an hour outside the park to wherever our private campground was. But at Colter Bay […]
Two Days in the Tetons: Visiting Grand Teton National Park
Travel dates: June 21-23, 2017 I think a lot of people view a visit to Grand Teton National Park the same way we did: as something you really might as well do when you’re already so close, visiting Yellowstone. And then, like us, they get there and realize that, not only is Grand Teton a beautiful, […]
Touring Yellowstone, Part 2: Yellowstone West (not West Yellowstone. That’s another post)
Travel dates: June 17-21, 2017 I’m tearing right along with these posts now, because I started mapping out in my head how many I’ll need to do a week in order to finish before our next summer trip….and I realized I needed to get moving. I’ve got to say, though, that spending the entire year between summer […]
Fishing Bridge RV Park Isn’t So Scary: A Campground Review
Travel dates: June 15-17, 2017 My post about all the stuff we did in Yellowstone while we were staying at Fishing Bridge Two days before we were due to arrive at Fishing Bridge RV Park in Yellowstone, I had something approaching a panic attack about it and spent an evening reading terrifying reviews online, becoming […]
Touring Yellowstone, Part 1: Yellowstone East
Travel dates: June 15-17, 2017 We left Cody and drove into Yellowstone National Park from the east, and our first impressions were of wildness and vastness. It had been an exceptionally wet winter, and there was snow everywhere, even in the middle of June (the snowman was waiting for us when we arrived; we didn’t […]