Craig vs Wall Street - a slot canyon in Bryce Canyon National Park The Utah National Parks have been on our list for this road tripping lifestyle almost from the beginning. Craig had never visited the parks, and I have not been to any since I went to Bryce/Arches on a family road trip when I was a young teenager. This spring seemed like the perfect time - we were already on the West Coast and starting the Utah road trip in early May meant we were able to see half the parks

The Amphitheater - we got up close and personal with a lot of it. [This post is part of the Utah Ultimate National Parkness series - see the main post for additional background.] You can see 80-90% of the park in the above single photo - as I mentioned in the main post, it is the smallest of the Utah National Parks and has the highest elevation. And, it’s not really a canyon - the park is actually the eastern edge of a really high, enormous plateau (the eastern edge of the P

[This post is part of the Utah Ultimate National Parkness series - see the main post for additional background.] As I mentioned, Zion National Park was our favorite of the Big Five national parks in Utah. Just about everywhere you go in the park was pretty, but then when you hike up a bit, you really get the full perspective and beauty of the park. I think our favorite hike was the Emerald Pools/Kayenta hike. From there, the valley between Zion’s canyon walls looked very p

[This post is part of the Utah Ultimate National Parkness series - see the main post for additional background.] What is it about natural arches made of rock that intrigues and inspires us so much? I have no idea, but they are SO VERY COOL. Going to Arches National Park, you get big arches, small arches, thin arches, double arches, far arches, near arches, etc, etc. and you can enjoy many of them in just a few days. Here are some of my favorites: The most iconic arch in the p

[This post is part of the Utah Ultimate National Parkness series - see the main post for additional background.] Why did we love Canyonlands? Because it was enormous and has these seriously carved vistas that rival the Grand Canyon. It’s also mysterious in its own way because so much of it is still completely wild and very difficult to access, with only one of the three districts having multiple paved roads. The views are simply breathtaking. The best way to start your visi

[This post is part of the Utah Ultimate National Parkness series - see the main post for additional background.] Western Escarpment of the Waterpocket Fold - NPS image, since we couldn’t get anywhere near the right perspective from the scenic drive right next to the cliffs. As mentioned in the main Utah post, we went on a lovely scenic drive between the Zion/Bryce area and the Arches/Canyonlands area (Moab, Utah), which took us through Capitol Reef National Park, the most rec

Growing up in Southern California, Palm Springs was always a legendary, iconic place, outside the greater LA metro area, but not “too far”. When I was old enough to visit, though, I found it …. well …. a little boring. I won’t bore you with the details (see what I did there?), but I do have fond memories of nearby Idyllwild and had also always heard good things about Joshua Tree National Park. As a result, when we were planning our first post-retirement “wintering,” Palm S

As part of our retirement planning, we needed to figure out what we wanted to do during the winter months. I do not like the cold. I’m one of those people who grew up in LA and always complained when the weather got “bad,” meaning below 60 degrees, days of rain, etc, etc. Although Craig is much more cold-tolerant than I am, our activity goals these days include so much outside time, that living in places with “normal” winters didn’t seem right for us. We also didn’t want to

Lost Dutchman State Park If you haven’t read it already, check out Part 1 about why we decided to “winter” in southern Arizona. I have to be honest, we did not like Phoenix nearly as much as Tucson. It was fine, we did lots of fun things, but we probably won’t be back for a long stay. We did really like the area we stayed in, Chandler. It was a nice residential area, about 15-20 minutes from the South Mountain Preserve , which had decent hiking trails (but wasn’t as pretty

If you’ve been following my blog, you know that we’ve been hiking a lot - it’s our primary form of exercise and also we just love it for the variety of hiking locations, the fresh air, the views, etc. Most of our hikes have been in the woods, by babbling brooks or other waterways. We were not sure what to expect from Southern Arizona - was it just going to be dry desert? Were we going to enjoy the scenery? Or was it just going to be barren? Short answer, we loved it. Tucso

The food! The art! The wine! The pretty views! We were not expecting to love New Mexico as much as we did. We stayed in 5 different places in New Mexico and found that the food (local Mexican food in particular) was very good, the local wines were the best we’ve tasted outside of California, the art scene was very impressive and so were the natural views. New Mexico is also an interesting state by the numbers. Some fun facts: It’s the fifth largest state by area, but only ha

Just as we serendipitously found ourselves on Route 66 in the spring, we magically (unintentionally?) found ourselves following the old Santa Fe Trail this fall - all the way from Kansas City to Santa Fe. We learned that between 1821 and 1880, the Santa Fe Trail was an important commercial highway connecting Missouri and Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was primarily important because ranchers could herd their cows from the southern ranches to much higher paying customers further n

We really could not have driven through the southern part of New Mexico without stopping in Roswell. As Craig said, we had to get to the bottom of the Alien Landing thing. Yeah, we did ALL the touristy stuff. Why wouldn’t we? It all started with the Roswell Welcome sign and the official mural (above): Everything in Roswell is alien themed, and I do mean everything - did you see the Dunkin’ and McDonald’s photos in the We ♥️ New Mexico post? How about the street lamps? Here

Some random stuff from in-between. I debated whether or not to even post about these, because there was no theme or geographical relationship between them, but some are too much fun to leave out. First, we spent a long weekend in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on our way south from the UP and had a lot of fun there! They had a several cute local events for us to enjoy, the downtown area we stayed in was right on the river, and there was even an aviation museum! After Oshkosh, we backtrac

View of the Menominee River from our dock. Who are the Yoopers, you might ask? According to the guidebooks, that’s how the folks who live in Michigan’s Upper Penninsula refer to themselves (it’s the “U. P.”). When we decided to start our retirement travels with the Great American Road Trip (GART), we wanted to be sure we went to lots of places (1) we had never been, (2) didn’t know anything about, and (3) were different from our pre-retirement vacations. Well, we had heard

Our path from New Hampshire to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, our next month-long destination, took us through the Great Lakes area, giving us lots of options for enjoying the journey. The best part was that it gave us the opportunity to go through Niagara Falls - we spent a couple of days on the Canadian side, which was the perfect amount of time. The falls were spectacular - we did not make it to the maid of the mist boat trip that goes right up to the falls (see photo above f

View from the Escarpment Trail in Catskill Park. Pronounced cook-SOCK-ee, Coxsackie is a lovely little town on the western bank of the ...

OR - Only Mad Dogs and Englishmen*. We knew when we made our plans to visit DC that the weather was likely to be hot and humid, but we...

View from Pisgah Inn viewing platform, Pisgah National Forrest And we felt like we climbed them all! After our month in Charleston, SC,...

Next stop - Charleston, South Carolina. In case you are curious, our summer plans were roughly determined by our plans to be in New...