Ah, Dry Tortugas National Park. Such a great park to reminisce about, especially as I’m looking at the snow. Dry Tortugas is one of the most remote national parks and the least visited, due to its limited accessibility. It is located 68 miles off of Key West in Florida and consists of seven little islands. It takes about 2.5 hours by ferry to get to the park. During our first round through the south while we were living in the…
I don’t think anyone could ever live in California and say there is nothing to do! It seems like no matter where you are at, there is a National Park treasure just a couple hours away! After we visited Sequoia and Kings Canyon, we drove a quick four hours to Pinnacles National Park! It was late afternoon on a hot August weekend in southern California when we arrived to the park, so we took one of the last campsites they…
After our time at Olympic, Mike and I headed into Seattle to see a few of my friends! When I taught English in South Korea a million years ago, a large group of my friends that I made were all from Seattle. One of my best friends from college is also from there, so I had a plethora of friends to catch up with before Mike and I headed down to Mount Rainier National Park! We entered Mount Rainier from…
After Alaska, we zoomed 45 or so hours back to Bellingham, Washington, where my friends Beth and Lauren live. They are amazing and took care of our fur baby, Luca, while we were adventuring and hanging out with bears. Luca had a great time while he was there; he still hasn’t stopped talking about it. After some good catching up and tacos, we headed down to Olympic National Park. We were joined by my mom for this park, as she…
After the bear-y exciting time at Katmai, it was finally time for our last park in Alaska; Glacier Bay National Park! We had attempted to make this our first park when we got to Alaska, but once we drove into Skagway, we had learned that the ferry tends to sell out a week or so in advance which is why we continued on and decided to hit it up later. And it turns out, it was even easier for us…
Ohhhh, Katmai National Park. If you google “bears eating salmon,” you will most definitely get images of grizzly bears at Katmai. Brooks Camp is a huge area for salmon runs, which leads to this special place being home for dozens and dozens of grizzlies…. which of course, means it’s one of the most popular parks to visit. However, this is another park that you have to fly into. We flew with Katmai Air from Anchorage. The park is directly south…
My namesake National Park, Lake Clark, was next on this adventure! This is one of the parks you have to fly into. There are no roads in or to this park. It is an undeveloped area full of lakes, streams, volcanos, rivers, mountains, and it includes the headwaters for the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery; making it a haven for fishers. We flew to this park with Lake & Pen Air from their small office near the main airport. It…
After my disappointing experience with the Arctic Parks, Mike and I headed to the crown jewel of Alaska; Denali National Park. We arrived late morning, so we grabbed my Junior Ranger booklet, talked to the rangers, and made a game plan.We’ve been walking the fine line of spontaneity and still getting tickets/reservations/etc. Sometimes it bites us in the butt, but we got veryyyy lucky and were able to reserve the very last campsite for the following evening at Wonder Lake…
After Yellowstone, we headed towards Glacier National Park! I was super excited for this park; I had heard so many wonderful things from everyone and I had never been here. First though, we stopped in the town of Bozeman and got our life together again i.e. we showered. We continued along the way and slept outside of the park. Okay, it was in a Montana saloon, Trixi’s, parking lot, don’t judge us. When we asked the bartender if it would…
We entered Grand Teton National Park from the North entrance which meant we had to do a quick drive through Yellowstone first. Woof…. both these parks are poppin with thousands of people. Luckily, this helped remind us to get back into our good system; early evening activities, sleep a little, and get back at it around sunrise. Best way to avoid the crowds! When we arrived, we stopped at Flagg Ranch first for information. From there, Mike biked to Colter…