Where to Next?
MAY 2024
We booked a trip (in May) to visit our 42nd and 43rd National Parks. We are flying to Phoenix, then renting a vehicle so we can drive to Joshua Tree National Park in California. After a few days at Joshua Tree (Twenty-nine Palms) area, we are heading to St. George, Utah. (We usually stop for a day or two in Las Vegas, however, this trip we decided to stay in St. George instead.) St. George has several State Parks we are interested in visiting and hiking for the first time. Then after two days in St. George, we are heading to Great Basin National Park near Ely, Nevada We plan to stay two days in Ely and then head to Salt Lake City, Utah for one night before we return home. We are so looking forward to visiting two more new National Parks!!
Stay tuned for my blog about this trip!
Great Basin National Park-An International Dark Sky Park
Where to Next?
MARCH 2024
We booked a trip (in March) to visit our 41st National Park. March is not a month we usually like to travel and, we hope the weather is not too terrible. However, we feel like we need to get away for just a few days, so, St. Louis, Missouri, here we come...The old 1945 movie “Meet Me in St. Louis” comes to mind, and, honestly, that’s about the only thing (other than Gateway Arch National Park) we know about St. Louie! I am currently researching the area (doing some homework) to see if there is anything else (besides the Arch at the National Park) we would like to see and do while we are visiting the city. We are staying at a hotel that is located very close to the Arch (within walking distance), and our room is supposed to have an “Arch View”! Sounds quite wonderful to me! I would love to see the Arch all lit up from our hotel room at night.
Some information regarding Gateway Arch National Park:
Gateway Arch was built as a memorial to Thomas Jefferson’s role in the Westward Expansion of the United States in the nineteenth century, and the park is located smack in the middle of a big city. It is not the usual park we like to visit, where we can hike on some wilderness trails in the great outdoors. However, it is one of America’s National Parks! We would eventually visit the Arch one of these days, so we thought, why not now? The National Park covers only 91 acres of land, and the Arch itself is 630 feet tall (63 stories high). The Arch was completed on October 28, 1965, and it has two trams that can take you up to the top of it so you can take in some wonderful sights in all directions.
So, I bet you can guess what we will be doing…We will (definitely) be going up to the top on one of those trams to the “observation platform” to take some great pictures! Heck, this is indoors and only 630 feet up! It is not like climbing the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia (which we did in 2018) or walking across the New River Gorge Bridge, 876 feet in the air (which we just did last year)! This should be a cakewalk, or should I say, an easy tram ride up to the top!! No exertion at all is required! We are keeping our fingers crossed that our flight to St. Louis goes as planned. We also hope the weather will cooperate so we can “check off” another park from our long list of National Parks we have already visited in the United States! May the “Luck of the Irish” in March be with us!!
Where to Next?
We are looking at three trips (out West) we have tentatively researched and planned for the near future.
It all depends on my mother’s health (she will be 98 early next year), the weather in the areas we would like to travel, and how much time we will need to be away to visit everything we want to see (and hike)! As you probably know by now, we usually like to travel in May and September to avoid crowds at the National Parks.
We have wanted to revisit the Jackson Hole, Wyoming, area so we can visit Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park at least once more. However, we would also like to drive from Wyoming through Montana to visit Glacier National Park for the first time. I have wanted to visit Montana for at least four years!
Some of you may already know that Glacier National Park is one of the parks that can have inclement weather that closes sections of the park until mid-June or even mid-July! This trip would have to be planned in summer rather than May! We could even do this trip in early September.
We also have another trip planned…we fly into Seattle, rent a car and drive to the following six National Parks: Olympic National Park, Mt. Rainier National Park (take a little detour to see the Columbia River Gorge area and Multnomah Falls near Portland), Crater Lake National Park, Redwood National Park, Lassen Volcanic National Park, and Pinnacles National Park. Needless to say, this trip will take at least 3 weeks to complete and that is a pretty long time to be away from everything!
Another trip we have planned is to Salt Lake City, Utah, where we rent a car and drive to Great Basin National Park. Then, we finally get to see the Grand Staircase-Escalante area, the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, Antelope Canyon/Horseshoe Bend area (this area can only be visited with an Indian Tour Guide!), Sunset Crater (we have only tried to stop at Sunset Crater 3 times…we always decide to detour to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon instead!!), and Joshua Tree National Park. This trip will take us around two weeks to do.
So, right now, we are not sure where we are headed next…but you know it will be somewhere totally scenic and fun because life is way too short to just stay home!!
So, what are you waiting for?
Plan that trip you have been thinking about taking now!
Where am I headed next???
I am currently having a lot of fun planning our next hiking trip. We are heading to 4 new National Parks this Fall! We will visit Indiana Dunes, Cuyahoga Valley, New River Gorge, and Shenandoah National Parks.
New River Gorge has a Bridge Walk Tour over the big Gorge under the active bridge. You walk on 24-inch wide planks and are harnessed by a wire overhead so you can't fall into the Gorge! Sounds fantastic, and I bet our pictures will be fabulous...and Cuyahoga Valley has a pretty cool-looking train ride through the National Park! It sounds like a ton of fun to me, and if we get to go on the trip (you never know about flights nowadays), we will add four more National Parks to our list!! That would put us at 40 National Parks visited and hiked in the USA!! (Cool beans!!) You know I love our National Parks! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything works out. We need some fingers crossed! Please send me some of your adventures from any of these parks here!