bugsy running on lone rock beach with the airstream and f-150 in the background

Tag: national parks

  • Death Valley National Park

    Death Valley National Park

    We visited Death Valley in December 2023, as part of our Tucson for Christmas trip. Death Valley is HUGE: it’s the largest US national park outside of Alaska, larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined. It’s also the hottest, driest, and lowest national park, and the hottest place Earth, once hitting 134°F! (Beware of the heat if

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  • One night in Bowling Green, KY — Tucson for Christmas Trip

    One night in Bowling Green, KY — Tucson for Christmas Trip

    We were in Bowling Green in mid-December 2023, as part of our Tucson for Christmas trip. After a lovely afternoon at Mammoth Cave National Park, we drove 40 minutes to Bowling Green for the night. Campground The Bowling Green KOA is a nice, big campground, with a quick check-in (which you don’t always get at

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  • Mammoth Cave National Park

    Mammoth Cave National Park

    We visited Mammoth Cave in December 2023 as part of our Tucson for Christmas trip. We couldn’t resist picking up another national park (our 40th!) while in the vicinity: From Knoxville, it was a pleasant 3.5-hour drive on smaller roads to Mammoth Cave National Park in south-central Kentucky. On a Monday in December, we had

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  • Tucson Favorites

    Tucson Favorites

    Tucson is one of our very favorite cities to visit. It’s tied to our past: J’s brother and his family lived there for twenty years until about ten years ago; and for as long as I can remember, my Uncle Jim has been in love with the Arizona desert and has made frequent pilgrimages to

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  • One night in Blowing Rock, NC (visit #2)–Five Days in the Mountains

    One night in Blowing Rock, NC (visit #2)–Five Days in the Mountains

    We visited Blowing Rock in September 2023, as part of our Five Days in the Mountains trip. Read about our first visit way back in 2016 on Big Trip #1 here, and we also popped over from Boone in May 2021 and August 2021. As a recap, by this point in our trip we’d spent

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  • New River Gorge National Park

    New River Gorge National Park

    This post combines activities in the New River Gorge from visits in September 2019, in May 2021, and in September 2023. The first time we visited Fayetteville, WV, in 2019, New River Gorge National Park wasn’t yet a national park! Previously designated a National River, the 70,000 acres surrounding the New River (actually one of the

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  • One night in Fayetteville, WV (visit #4)–Five Days in the Mountains

    One night in Fayetteville, WV (visit #4)–Five Days in the Mountains

    We visited Fayetteville in September 2023, as part of our Five Days in the Mountains trip. Read about our previous visits here: Fall 2019, Spring 2021, and late Summer 2022. We spent the first night of a whirlwind Airstream tour through the mountains near home in Fayetteville, WV, home of New River Gorge National Park.

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  • Trip planning recommendations: DC-area to Yellowstone

    Trip planning recommendations: DC-area to Yellowstone

    Hi strangers! Long time, not much posting. We’re just coming out of the doldrums of summer here in VA, sweating and dreaming about our next big Airstream trip coming up in December. In the meantime, I wanted to write up some advice we gave a very special someone earlier this summer when she asked for

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  • Trip planning: Tucson for Christmas

    Trip planning: Tucson for Christmas

    This will be our fourth time taking the Airstream to Tucson. Read about our first trip here, second here, and third here! And I finally wrote a Tucson Favorites post! [Update, like a year later: here’s the retrospective post for this trip!] Luuuucky us! We get to spend Christmas in Tucson with family! We’ll be

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  • Big Trip #4: Retrospective

    Big Trip #4: Retrospective

    Big Trip #4 was in fact a BIG trip! We covered a lot of ground and had all sorts of memorable experiences, and that’s why it took me almost four months to finish writing all the trip posts. My bad. But I love writing these retrospectives a few months after we get home because it

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