Finally we’ve returned to camping and hiking season around these parts! Just as a lot of people are storing their gear for colder months, we southerners are digging it out and are ready to get outside. Gone (mostly) are the days of standing outside for two minutes before dripping in sweat so now is the […]
Beach Scenes
For our vacation, since we were on North Padre already, we opted to drive down to Padre Island National Seashore for all of our beach visits. I think this was mostly spurred because the first night we were there we drove down after dinner and it was quite peaceful with just a few cars on […]
Sea Turtles at Packery Channel
The second afternoon of our vacation we popped down to the Packery Channel jetties to walk along them (they have a sidewalk on top) and to look for sea turtles as we had done six years ago when it was just Chris and me. We were looking to kill a little time before dinner and […]
Birthday Fun at the Texas State Aquarium
For Forest’s birthday we spent most of the morning at the Texas State Aquarium. I hadn’t been since I was a teenager, about 20 years ago, and during that time period went two or three times. I had vague memories of it but couldn’t quite recall everything about it. It appeared based on the website […]
100 Years of the National Park Service – National Parks Part II
Great Smoky Mountains Even though I had been to the adjacent town of Cherokee, NC several times for work, I had never ventured over to see the Smoky Mountains until our thru-hike on the AT. Clingman’s Dome hosts the highest point on the Appalachian Trail, the joke being that once you climb the summit then […]
100 Years of the National Park Service – Monuments, Historical Parks, and Memorials
Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument Less than an hour from Billings, Montana on the Crow Reservation is the memorial to the battle of Little Big Horn, or what many people know it as, Custer’s Last Stand. One of the perks of my job in Florida was being able to travel multiple times a year and […]
100 Years of the National Park Service – Trails and Recreation Areas
Appalachian National Scenic Trail All of my Appalachian Trail posts are here Florida National Scenic Trail – While part of the National Trails System, it is administered by the US Forest Service. All of my Florida Trail posts are here Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area This recreation area we hit up on our AT […]
100 Years of the National Park Service – National Seashores
Canaveral National Seashore I think Chris probably spent more time on this seashore than I did—really I may have only been once when Chris stopped to fish somewhere on the Indian River Lagoon. I know he went up to fish fairly often when we lived on the Space Coast. Gulf Islands National Seashore My visit […]
100 Years of the National Park Service – National Parks Part I
Acadia When we finished our Appalachian Trail thru-hike in 2010 my mom came up to Maine and spent a few days with us tooling around the state with us. We stayed in Bar Harbor a couple of days and visited Acadia National Park just briefly with a hike up Cadillac Mountain to watch the sun […]
100 Years of the National Park Service – Park List
In honor of the National Park Service’s 100th Birthday on August 25th, I’m going to spend this week sharing snippets of parks that I’ve been to under the jurisdiction of the NPS. Many people don’t realize there are more than just ‘parks’ that are part of that system and it extends out to seashores, monuments, […]
