After leaving the San Diego area, I headed east to spend 3 days and nights at Joshua Tree. I’ve been wanting to visit this park for decades and finally made it out here. Wrong time of year, definitely, with temperatures in the 100s but … I loved this park. I just wanted to see the trees but the park is so much more than that. There is amazing scenery, rock piles, mountains, “gardens” of cholla cacti, plus, great trails, historic…
Despite booking a “pet friendly” hotel, when I checked in Saturday night, I was given a form with all sorts of rules. The first rule: If I left my dog alone, they would call animal control. Absurd. So I quickly went online trying to find a true pet friendly place to stay. I called other hotels, filtered by pets allowed, but all of them said the same, no pets left in room. One even told me “no hotels allow you…
The eighth wonder of the world. Truly amazing. I arrived in Carlsbad and stopped in the caverns on the way to town. I had hoped to get tickets then as well as general park info. I was told tours were fully booked until June 7th, 4 days after I was leaving. Disappointed but I thought I would continue to check recreation.gov per recommendation from the ranger. Boo and I did the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Trail and walked down to the amphitheater before…
Because of a large fire much of the park was closed. I visited the Piney Spring Visitor Center and did several short trails with Boo, when visiting on Memorial Day. The visitor center has a great exhibit on desert animals and plants. Well worth 1/2 hour or so of your time to stop and read the information. The Pinery Nature Trail, right behind the visitor center, leads to buildings from the Butterfield Stage, a 2800 mile route from Saint Louis…
Big Bend National Park: Mountains and deserts and rivers, oh my! Chisos Mountains, Chihuahuan Desert, and the Rio Grande make up the diverse and beautiful landscape of Big Bend. I’ve never been here, so when planning the next stage of my travels, I looked at the map and thought, I need to visit Big Bend! This is not a park that is easy to get to and it’s not highly visited. The ten most visited national parks range from the…
Like Gettysburg, I visited to see the military park. Unlike Gettysburg, there is no museum and the visitor center is also closed. It may have some great exhibits, information, and artifacts that are comparable to Gettysburg. I stayed close to the downtown area, just off the Yazoo River. I had an easy walk to Washington or Levee Streets and was close to all the restaurants and sites. I stopped at the visitor center my first morning to pick up a…
I was trying to find a place on the south gulf coast, originally looking between Sarasota to Captiva/Sanibel, even as far south as Naples and Marco Island, but everything was outrageously expensive. I’m not paying $10K for a month rental or $2000 for a simple private room in a home. So I kept moving my search north up the coast until I found someplace that looked clean and was a bit more affordable. I originally just wanted a place to…
I read an article about the Legacy Museum when it open in 2018 and thought, if I’m ever in Montgomery, I will have to visit this. Sounds amazing. I had actually forgotten where exactly the museum was and what it was called, just remembered “equal justice”. So with time between bookings I searched on equal justice museum and found the correct information for the Legacy Museum and Memorial in Montgomery. I was just going to plan a day or two…
I knew after visiting for a day last winter, I wanted to spend more time in Charleston. After my stay in Asheville, I continued south to Charleston. I couldn’t find any place I liked and was affordable in downtown but I found a place in North Charleston. It was a nice neighborhood, up by the lovely Park Circle and just a block and a half from lots of restaurants, bars, stores on Montague and Spruill. It was a great neighborhood…
I finally made it over to Congaree National Park, just south of Columbia for a day. It’s a little less than a 2 hour drive. I’ve been checking the weather and the NPS Congaree current conditions regularly because the trails have been flooded. I had a perfect day, high 50s, brightly sunny and below flood stage so drove over Thursday the 14th. I stopped at the visitor center to talk to one of the rangers/volunteers about the trails and the conditions,…