On the road again! That Willie Nelson song title keeps popping up in my mind when I sit down to write. One part of the song talks about going places and seeing things that I haven’t seen before, and that really fits my National Park hunt. Yes, I am out and about again, and my […]

Did you know the National Park Service manages more than 430 sites? Those include National Parks, National Monuments, National Historical Sites, National Historic Parks, National Seashores, National Lakeshores, National Scenic Rivers/Trails, etc. I had decided years ago that I was going to visit most, if not all, of the National Parks and pretty much dismissed […]

“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, […]