Yellowstone: Part 2

After a couple of days fighting with the crowds on the west side, we drove to the north side of the park through Norris and up to Mammoth Hot Springs. We stopped at Artists Paintpot which contains a nice array of geological formations: fumeroles (stinky gas and steam, no water… we were making fumerole jokes...
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Yellowstone: A Completely Foreign Planet

Above: Grand Prismatic Spring While the views at our boondock site in Grand Teton were, well, grand, the warming weather brought out ridiculously large mosquitoes in droves so we were not sorry to pack up and head north to Yellowstone. Since Yellowstone is just north of Grand Teton, we didn’t expect our drive to take...
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Grand Teton National Park

From SLC, we made a two-day drive north to Grand Teton National Park. We chose to boondock for free in the Bridger-Teton National Forest adjacent to the park thanks to the good reviews on Campendium. The nearby National Park campgrounds were either $52-70/night with electric, or $28/night with no hookups, in a forested area where solar power...
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Utah, it’s May and snow??

Originally we planned (we use that phrase often) to hit Monument Valley and Moab after Sedona but had to take a sharp u-turn back to Yuma so I could get some quick work done on my crown covering my implant. The positive was that Dr. Urena (my dentist) got me in quick and replaced the crown...
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Sedona hiking and more hiking

We decided to make our first hike easy and short to start warming up our legs. Fay Canyon is a 2.5 mile, flat out-and-back hike through the densely-vegetated canyon floor. The maintained trail ends at massive boulders in a wash but we felt adventurous, plus the first mile was more of a stroll than a...
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Detours can be a good thing

After finishing with Texas, we headed to our favorite winter destination, Tucson AZ. Since we had to make it through most of Texas and all of New Mexico, it did take us 3 straight days of driving to get to Tucson. Poor Opie was having some cabin, er RV, fever by the time we reached Tucson....
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Everything is bigger in Texas

After leaving Tampa, we took the ubiquitous Interstate 10 straight through to Texas. I-10 is the major east-west highway through the southern U.S. so it’s the most convenient and direct route; however it does have some rough patches in Louisiana and we were sure we might lose some screws, or at least a side mirror...
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Last National Park of the year

From Denver, we headed north and west to Estes Park CO to visit Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP), which will probably be the last NP for us this year. After Colorado, we make our way back “home” to the DC area to see family which means lots of people time, not much sightseeing time. Estes Park...
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Denver and our first 14er

After a steep and careful drive over (and through) the Rocky Mountains we made it back to “civilization”, so to celebrate, our first outing was to the nearby Costco to get our staples. No longer can we buy truckloads of toilet paper, but Costco does have a few things that we can rely on without overflowing Rover. We...
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