Category: National Parks
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Big Meadows
The ranger warned us about the impending weather. He recommended we leave before the front came through. He said that once we paid our camp fees, there were no refunds. Were we sure we wanted to commit? “Game on!” Big Meadows is smack dab in the middle of Skyline Drive at mile marker 51, complete with a National…
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Loft Mountain
What a difference a year makes. This time last October we left a consulting gig in Pennsylvania to take Betty west to Phoenix but landed in Tucson cause sometimes things don’t go according to plan. On that GET TO THE WEST adventure we booked three nights in Great Smokey Mountain National Park, unaware that the campground…
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Badlands Bike and Hike
If you’ve ever wanted to see the Badlands, go now … they are crumbling. It’s a world of sandcastles on the Crayola plains. Stunning vistas but when you get up close, you experience the effects of extreme weather washing them away. Last night’s lightening infested skies brought torrential rain and thundering wind that shook Betty…
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I Feel a Badlands Arising
Mushrooms and cactus are out. Bison and prairie dogs are in. Bison are the largest land mammal in North America. They weigh up to 2 tons and stand as tall as 6.5 feet. Extremely agile, they can jump up to 6 feet high and reach speeds of 35 mph. We didn’t see them do anything…
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Rolling Condo on the Prairie
John Grisham and his buddy Scott Sowers accompanied us on the two day 550 mile trek from Walsenburg, Colorado through construction laden, jersey wall confined, darting traffic, heavy drive workload, big city Denver, into sleepy/creepy Cheyenne, Wyoming and up to Hot Springs, South Dakota and Wind Cave National Park. On the long, trance-like stretches, they…
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House Hunters Mesa Verde
Around 500 CE, the indiginous people of Colorado’s Mesa Valley region were living in underground pit houses and growing beans, corn and squash on a huge mesa at 8000 feet elevation. After a few hundred years, someone thought to climb down from that mesa and literally carve out a life on the cliffs out of…
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Needle Nose Fliers
Needles is the definition of the middle of nowhere. When you are standing at Grand View overlook at the Island in the Sky, gazing south over canyonlands, awed by the vast expanse of uninhabitable, viciously eroded land, wondering what it must be like to live down there, go to Needles District because that is what…
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Time Arches On
Someone said, “It’s what we’ve done that makes us who we are.” We think it was Jim Croce. And on birthday weekend, we’re shaking up time in a bottle and letting it rip! Arches National Park was the last of the Mighty Five on our 2019 Utah Spring Tour. We went from Z to A…
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Moab Madness
Moab is a crazy place. Young men named Aaron live out of their van and work odd jobs to enable them to play in this unique landscape in the most extreme ways. Mountain bikers fly through rolling slickrock formations maneuvering a foot or two from huge drops. Rock climbers scale vertical rock faces that jut…
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Get To The (Dead Horse) Point
Legend has it that Dead Horse Point was used as a corral for wild mustangs roaming the mesa. Cowboys rounded up these horses and herded them across the narrow neck of land onto the point. The neck, 30 yards wide, was then fenced off with branches and brush, creating a natural corral surrounded by the…