2025

Our next stop on this year’s adventure was Theodore Roosevelt National Park, in western North Dakota.  Roosevelt visited the area as a young man after a personal tragedy.  His time in Dakota Badlands profoundly shaped his conservation ethic and inspired his creation of the National Park System.  This park memorializes the President’s legacy of conservation.  […]

This is the part of the trip where we are slowly making our way back across the U.S., in no hurry to get to Florida before it cools down a bit, as Rita so rightly pointed out in her comments on the blog.  As we made our way across Montana to North Dakota, we stopped

Dave and I headed to Montana to visit Glacier National Park.  Dave snagged an awesome campsite at Flathead Lake with a view of the lake below us.  Little did we know that Flathead Lake is the largest natural lake in the Western U.S., approximately 30 miles long and 16 miles wide and is one of

From the North Cascades, we are making our way over to Glacier National Park in Northern Montana.  First stop, Winthrop, Washington, a charming old-west themed town.  Winthrop was a gold-rush town in the 1880’s and was re-born as a Old West theme town in the 1970’s, hoping to lure tourists after the completion of Highway

On the road again!  Dave found a way for us to save several hours of driving and avoid the Seattle and Tacoma congested areas—take a ferry!   We boarded the ferry with our truck pulling Mini-T and just 35 minutes later we had crossed Puget Sound and arrived in the small town of Coupeville, WA.  We

After exploring the lush rainforests of Olympic National Park in the state of Washington, Dave and I made our way to the northwestern-most tip of the continental United States.   We stayed in the small town of Sekiu, where the lone grocery store–a HessMart, was surprisingly well-stocked for a convenience store.  Our campsite sat on a

Dave and my next stop on our nature tour of the Pacific Northwest was Olympic National Park, which is huge!  Encompassing almost 1 million acres, it is made up of a diverse landscape including the coast with arches and sea stacks, rainforests with old growth trees, and rugged mountains with glaciers, rivers, and streams. To

As Dave and I continue our nature tour of the Pacific Northwest, the state of Washington has three not-to-miss national parks.  Dave carefully crafted our time in Washington around these parks and nearby gems.   First up, Mount Rainer National Park.  Dave chose Mossyrock State Park as our home base, which sits between Mount Rainer

What is it about lighthouses that draws so much attention? Perhaps it is their dramatic locations, perched on rugged cliffs, surrounded by the beauty of coastal scenery. Maybe it’s their historic role as lifelines for sailors, guiding vessels safely through treacherous waters. Or is it their distinctive, often iconic architecture.  And who can forget the

Dave and my final stop along the Oregon coast was at Fort Stevens State Park in the northwest tip of Oregon.  The campsite was nestled in the forest and it was only a mile walk along a paved trail to the dog-friendly Clatsop beach. Each morning, Murphy and I headed to the beach for our