The two most popular hikes in Zion for the adventurous are Angels Landing and The Narrows. The former, Angels Landing, is a 5-mile roundtrip up a 1,500 foot tower via two sets of switchbacks, followed by a 0.4 mile finish across the “Spine,” a narrow sandstone ridgeline with 1,000 foot drop-offs on both sides. This … Continue reading
Zion National Park sits in the southeast corner of Utah where the most popular features can only be accessed via Utah’s Highway 9, a State Scenic Byway. Leaving Page, Arizona, we retraced our steps on US Highway 89 west to Kanab, Utah, where the road dipped briefly back into Arizona as AZ-389 before rising again … Continue reading
It was a 265 mile drive north from Phoenix to Page, Arizona, near the Utah border, up I-17 to Flagstaff, then continuing north on US Highway 89 and, finally, UT-20 to the Page Lake Powell Campground. I am older than the town of Page (pop. 7,500), founded in 1957 as a community for housing the … Continue reading
One of the reasons that the Grand Canyon is so popular is its location in the northwestern corner of Arizona, just a 4-hour drive from Las Vegas Airport. Leaving Grand Canyon, many tourists head north to Zion or Bryce Canyon National Parks, but we were headed the other direction, south, taking AZ-64 South to I-40 … Continue reading
If you’re going to visit the National Parks of the Colorado Plateau and want to enjoy it, get up and get going early; otherwise, expect crowds and heat. From the bar & grill near our campground, it’s an easy half-mile walk to the canyon’s rim, from which the Rim Trail continues east for about 4 … Continue reading
Leaving Bryce Saturday morning, we drove west on UT-12 to US Highway 89, taking that road south to Kanab, Utah. Jim and Von opted to continue south from Kanab into Arizona on US-89A through the scenic Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness area. Dale and I stayed on US-89, heading east to Page, Arizona, which lies just beyond … Continue reading
Just outside of Bryce Canyon NP, in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, is a hidden gem of a trail, widely known to the locals, but kept secret from the multitudes of tourists visiting the nearby National Park. Since only a handful of people read this blog, I’m going to let the cat out of the … Continue reading
Our travels to Bryce Canyon were coordinated to meet up with our friends, Jim and Von, who were driving down from Madison, Wisconsin, with their dog, Daisy, making stops to hike and paddle along the way. They arrived in nearby Tropic in the late afternoon and we met up for dinner after our canyon hike … Continue reading
Leaving Fort Collins on Labor Day, we avoided the high passes of I-70 and the holiday traffic in and out of Denver, driving north on US Highway 287 to Laramie, Wyoming, then west on I-80 around the northern peaks of the Rocky Mountains. We left I-80 and Wyoming on WY-789, which soon became CO-13 (photo … Continue reading
My favorite month to be in Bellingham, Washington, is September. But, this year, we will be elsewhere: visiting our daughter, Kelly, in Colorado; our son, Trevor, and daughter-in-law, Alicia, in Arizona; and, traveling and hiking with our good friends, Jim and Von Gern, in Utah and the Grand Canyon. Anxious to get to Colorado, we … Continue reading
On the way back to the campground, we stopped at Diablo Lake Overlook to see what was in store for us the next day. The water in Diablo Lake is milky, rather than translucent like that of Ross Lake, because Diablo is fed by silt-carrying glacial meltwater from the Neve and Colonial Glaciers via Thunder … Continue reading
At the end of July, we headed off in our RV to the Cascade mountains to celebrate our anniversary. Driving south from Bellingham (orange star) on I-5, we took the exit to Sedro-Wooley, then continued east on WA-20, following the Skagit River uphill toward its modern source, Diablo and Ross Lakes, collectors of glacial and … Continue reading
Before leaving Crescent Beach, we decided to hike out to Tongue Point on the north end of the adjacent county park, Salt Creek Recreation Area. Although the tide was out far enough for us walk along the beach and shoreline all the way to the Point, the manager of our campground suggested that we drive … Continue reading
The goal of our second hiking day from the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center was to get to the base of Mount Angeles (elev. 6,454), lost in the clouds in the photo below. From the parking area, we first hiked up High Ridge Trail, the first half of which is paved. From a vantage point below … Continue reading
While we were camped at Crescent Beach for the week (map, below, top left at arrow), we drove through Port Angeles and up Hurricane Ridge Road several times, once visiting the main Olympic National Park Visitor Center to talk to the rangers about recommended hikes on the north side, and twice to go hiking from … Continue reading
After lunch Friday, we left LaPush and headed back inland, taking US Hwy 101 north and then east around the southern shore of Lake Crescent (where the road is currently being resurfaced). At the east end of Lake Crescent, we turned north on the fun-to-drive-and-very-scenic-but-not-for-the-faint-of-heart county roads: East Beach Road – Joyce Piedmont Road – … Continue reading
Grover Cleveland is not remembered for many things, but here are the highlights: he was the third Presidential candidate to win the popular vote, but lose the electoral vote, and, therefor, the election (you probably know who the next two were); he was the only U. S. President to serve two terms non-consecutively (1885-89 and … Continue reading
Once again we’re staying on Indian lands; this time, the Quileute (or Quillayute) Reservation. Like the Makah of Ozette, the Quileute settled on the coast at the mouth of a river and found sustenance from the sea as fishermen and whalers. According to Wikipedia: The Quileute believed that each person had an individual guardian. They … Continue reading
The main attraction in Neah Bay is the museum, the Makah Cultural and Research Center, that houses and displays the artifacts retrieved from the dig at Ozette on Cape Alava. Taking photographs of the artifacts in the museum is prohibited, but they can be seen on the Washington University Libraries website here and here. The … Continue reading
As I mentioned in my last post, the westernmost point of the contiguous United States is Cape Alava, about 15 miles due south of Cape Flattery. To get there Tuesday, we returned southeast on SR-112 to the Hoko-Ozette Road, taking that road southwest through private timber land to the drive’s terminus at the ranger station … Continue reading
Olympic National Park, just a couple hours from our home in Bellingham, Washington, is the 10th most visited national park in the United States. And though we’ve been in Washington for nearly 5 years now, we are just getting around to exploring the Olympic Peninsula. We left early Monday for the beginning of a 2-week … Continue reading
Our passage from Whittier to Yakutat across Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska was a scheduled distance of 346 statute miles; from Yakutat to Juneau is another 269 miles. Of the ten ships currently in the Alaska Marine Highway fleet, only the Kennicott is certified to operate in open water; consequently, only its … Continue reading
It took less than two hours to drive from Palmer to Bird Creek Campground in Chugach State Park on Turnagain Arm, our final campsite before boarding the Alaska Marine Highway ferry at Whittier Monday evening, September 10th. It was a nice drive, starting with a scenic view of the Chugach Mountains on the left and … Continue reading
Thursday, September 6th, found us back for a few nights at Alaska Paradise RV Park in Palmer to prepare for our upcoming ferry ride back to the Lower 48: cleaning the RV and Jeep, doing laundry, packing carry-ons for the boat, clearing out the refrigerator, getting everything stowed and going out for a bon voyage … Continue reading
Leaving Denali, we drove north on the Parks Highway into Alaska’s interior on our way to North Pole. No, not THAT North Pole. We were headed to a small town just east of Fairbanks that some marketing genius in the 1950s named North Pole, Alaska. Another opportunist immediately cashed in on the name, opening a … Continue reading
The Road Less Traveled 