Today we toured through Olympic National Park, our sixth national park on the tour. This was my final national park before I head back to Maine on Sunday, but Kris still plans to hit a few more on her journey back to New England. Olympic NP is in the Northwest corner of Washington on the opposite side of Pugeut Sound as Seattle. We took a ferry early in the morning over to the peninsula and began working our way around the park. The park has high glaciated mountains, the biggest being Mount Olympus in the middle of the park. We finally could see some snow capped mountains in Washington today including Mt. Rainier from our ferry boat ride. Olympic also has two temperate rain forests that receives over 140 inches per year. The western part of ... read more

We crossed over the Idaho border and headed straight for Mt. Rainier. I have heard so much about this mountain and the northwest weather, so we prepared for the worst. Well, not exactly! We were planning on getting in a couple of hikes and then camping, but the rain and fog were so thick that it was almost impossible to see on the twisting and winding roads on the mountain. We did get a few hikes in, but with the weather being as wet as the great northwest can be, we decided to check in to a bread and breakfast instead. We found a great deal in a small town on the outskirts of the western entrance to the park in a town called Ashford. We had our own rooms which was a first, and a ... read more

We spent the day in Glacier National Park on the Canadian border of Montana today. I have been to Banff and Jasper park and Glacier is right up there with some of the most spectacular views of glacial lakes, streams, waterfalls and of course rocking peaks. We drove up the Going to the Sun road and had another beautiful day for wandering around the parks. There was no signs of any bears or moose, but the first few hikes were pretty nice without too many people around. We did run into a 30 minute wait at Logan Pass, so we were not able to hike the 10 mile garden wall trail which sends hikers across a narrow rocky path some 20 feet above the road and down through the continental divide. I was able to upload ... read more

Jackson Hole Wyoming and the Grand Teton National Park was not really on our agenda when we took off from Maine at the beginning of the month, but I had heard from so many people that it was worth the trip that we traveled the extra miles to get there just before darkness fell. We actually found one hotel room available in Dubois, Wyoming next to the Bighorn Sheep Museum. Luckily the local restaurant was still open with a great local beer and buffalo burgers on the grill. Another great frontier meal. The next morning we treked into the Grand Teton Nation Park and took in a hike. We took a boat ride across a glacier lake to the other side to begin our journey meeting a family from Massachusetts along the way. We then hiked ... read more

Today we went through the Badlands National Park and hiked many really cool paths around rattle snake country looking for animals and great views. I brought along the Flip Video camera and edited a short movie. Check it out! After the Badlands we headed for world famous Wall Drug. Yes, we got the free ice water and checked out all the wonderful eats and souvenir stores, but I didn't buy anything there in Wall. We checked into our hotel in Rapid City and found a great brewery down on Main Street called the Firehouse Brewing Company. I had a rancher's pie for lunch with a couple of their own brews including my favorite the smoke jumper's stout. The rancher's pie was mashed potatoes and carrots topped with corned beef and gravy. It was very good! After ... read more