Mammoth Caves, KY
A massive network of underground caves in which we took a 4 mile ranger
guides hike that was entirely underground.
Rocky Mountains National Park, CO
A great park to drive through. Amazing views of snow capped mountains.
Some of the higher overlooks were inaccessible due to snow, even in the
end of may.
Hanging Lake,
CO
An amazing little rest area in Glenwood Canyon, on the western side
of the Rockies in Colorado. We too the 1.5 mile hike up the a small clear
lake perched on the side of a mountain. It was a great place to climb around
and take pictures.
Arches National Park, UT
Easily one of the best places to visit if you're into desert and rock
formations. We did a lot of climbing around on the natural rock arches,
and got some really good pictures.
Canyonlands National Park
An interesting place to drive through. We stopped and climbed around
on the rocks. Near there we also saw the Newspaper Rock petroglyph. It
was pretty disappointing.
Bryce Canyon, UT
This was my favorite park that we saw on the way out. There were deep
narrow canyons of red sandstone that were really easy to walk through,
and get some amazing views.
Zion National Park, UT
Zion is also a wonderful park. It is definitely the most majestic of
the parks we visited in Utah. You just feel tiny hiking below these incredibly
huge cliffs. They also had a very interesting and well organized visitor's
center, that is worth checking out.
Grand Canyon National Park, AZ
On this trip we visited the north rim of the canyon. It was an impressive
sight, but there was really not much to do there. All of the hikes were
either short half mile walks to overlook points or 2 day long treks to
the base of the canyon.
Valley of Fire State
Park, NV
A pretty nice park just east of Las Vegas. At this point it was getting
so hot during the day that it was hard to get motivated enough to get out
of the car and hike.
Las Vegas
Vegas was a mixed bag. We saw the Blue Man Group show, and it was really
awesome. Neither of us was really into gambling so we just walked around
the strip. Pretty soon we were bored. we made it back to the hotel to find
that someone had broken in and stolen our duffel bag that contained a laptop
with all of our pictures from the trip stored on it. We left Vegas in a
pretty rotten mood.
Death Valley National Park, CA
Death Valley was hot. It was also pretty interesting. We drove through
the park on our way from Vegas to LA. We mostly stayed in the car, watched
the engine for overheating, and ventured out a few times to get pictures
of the surroundings. I'm really happy with a picture I took of Vince beside
the sign for Badwater, at 280 feet below sea level.
Check out my pictures from the way out
Joshua Tree National Park, CA
This was a pretty good national park with lots of cacti and of course
Joshua Trees. It basically has two types of deserts, one in the mountains
and one down on the flatlands. Each has its one type of ecosystem.
Grand Canyon National Park, AZ
As seen in photos, its a big hole in the ground. This time on the south
rim we went for more hikes. Best of all, we woke up at 5:30AM (not a common
thing for us) to make a photo hike. This was good because we kept up the
early mornings for the rest of the trip.
Meteor
Crater Natural Landmark, AZ
A mile wide hole in the ground made by a meteor.
Petrified Forest & Painted Desert
NP, AZ
We only had a chance top drive through this park after it had closed
for the night. We saw some petrified wood, and took some pictures of the
desert from the car.
Canyon de Chelly National
Monument, AZ
The first of many 800 year old Pueblo Indian (sometimes called Anasazi)
ruins. This is in the Navajo Indian reservation. It is in a very scenic
desert canyon through which we hiked down to get a closer look at on of
the cliff dwelling sites.
Monument
Valley Navajo Tribal Park, AZ
This place was awesome. There nothing to do here but drive around and
snap pictures of the mesas and desert. But given the amazing scenery, that's
enough to make it worth while.
Hovenweep National Monument, UT
We just saw this labeled on the map with a few red dots. It turned
out to be rather unknown and out of the way site for pueblo indian ruins.
Very nice if you don't mind putting your car through the ordeal of some
pretty sketchy dirt roads.
Mesa Verde National Park, CO
The ruins you see in the pictures are from here. We took a ranger
guided tour that walked us through the cliff dwelling village and explained
the history of the area. A fantastic place. Recently plagued by fire, several
areas were closed.
Great Sand Dune National Monument,
CO
Oh man, this place is a huge sand box. You can see me having some fun
jumping from one ridge. These things are mountains of sand, that are much
taller than they look. We spent hours to reach one peak and only barely
got a view of the rest of the range.
Capulin Volcano National Monument,
NM
A cone shaped mountain that was created by a volcano.
Old Route 66
We took I40 to get back, and ate at a dinner or two on the old Route
66.
Check out the pictures
I took on the way back