“Going to the woods is going home.” -John Muir, 19th-century naturalist and conservationist That is exactly how I felt as I drove into Yosemite National Park! After spending the previous day traversing the Sierra Nevada Mountains through Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Park, I chose the route into Yosemite with the fewest switchbacks […]

Wow! I mean WOW! The trees in Sequoia and Kings Canyon Natiional Parks are incredible! The sheer volume of the individual sequoia trees, with the majestic heights and incredible girth, drew me to the parks, yet I was less prepared than I expected. I didn’t realize that sequoia trees are larger in volume than redwoods, […]

Since I started this journey about nine months ago, I have had the privilege to douse my toes in the Atlantic Ocean, swim with sea turtles in the Caribbean Sea, collect shells from a beach at the Gulf of Mexico, dip my hand in the Rio Grande River and ride the waves at the Pacific […]

I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting to see when I entered Joshua Tree National Park, but it was way beyond my expectations! With elevations from 536 to 5,814 feet there are two distinct desert ecosystems contained in its 794,000 acres. The western half of the park is in the higher cooler Mojave Desert, […]

Forging ahead on my National Park hunt, I made the choice to stop at the Grand Canyon. The National Park Service has created collectable tokens for National Parks, National Monuments, National Historic Sites, etc. I started collecting them last September with my first one being from the Dry Tortugas National Park. I was so close […]

When you think of a petrified forest, do you think of a painted badlands? I didn’t, but that is what I found at the Petrified Forest National Park. Unexpected, but beautiful! Those of you who know me well, know how I feel about trees and how they feed my soul. That said, there was no […]