Glacier National Park is located in northwestern Montana along the Canadian border, and consists of some 1,600 square miles of mountains, forests, rivers, lakes, and, of course, glaciers (over 50 of them). It became our 10th National Park in 1910. In 1891 the Great Northern Railway had crossed the continental divide at nearby Marias Pass, opening the region to settlers, miners, and inevitably tourists. Seeing the potential of the area’s breathtaking beauty, the railroad promoted the region and built a series of lodges across the area connected by primitive trails. Tourists would travel on horseback, staying overnight in the lodges. [View Full Entry]

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We left Oregon on May 31, after a great month at the beautiful Nehalem Bay State Park, and after an overnight stay in a neat little Oceanside campground on the Washington coast, headed for southeastern Washington to spend a few days with some friends, Glen and Lori, from Vancouver, and Terry and Linda, from Bonners Ferry, Idaho, all of whom had worked with us as volunteers in Oregon last year. We stayed for 3 days at the Yakima Nation RV Resort, a nice resort and casino in Toppenish, WA, then we all moved about 100 miles east to the little [View Full Entry]

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From Durango we headed west into Utah, Stopping for lunch in Monticello, where we were greeted by a blizzard (by this Floridian’s standards, anyway). From Monticello we turned north toward Moab, and were soon in the spectacular canyon country of southeast Utah. We had made arrangements to meet our friends Glen and Judy Denner in Moab. We met the Denners and spent some time with them last September at the Montana Owners Club rally in Indiana, and were looking forward to seeing them again. Our schedule only permitted two days in Moab, which we knew was barely enough time to [View Full Entry]

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We stopped in Durango to visit our friends, Jim and Becky Rodefer, whom we met and traveled with last year in Alaska. Located on the edge of the mountains in picturesque southwestern Colorado, Durango is a real outdoorsman’s paradise, with great hunting, fishing, skiing, and whitewater rafting readily available in the area. It is also home to the Durango and Silverton narrow-gauge railroad, which began operation in 1882, and still carries passengers on the scenic route using authentic coal-fired steam engines and vintage passenger coaches. The tracks passed within about 50 feet of our campsite, and just after we arrived [View Full Entry]

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Crossing the Sacramento Mountains on US 82 we came to the little ski village of Cloudcroft, with a splendid view of the valley ahead and some 5,000 feet below. Here we got our first glimpse of the huge White Sands Missile Range. At 3,200 square miles, it is larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Here, at a site called Trinity, the atomic age began at 5:30 AM on July 16, 1945 with the the detonation of an implosion-design plutonium bomb, the culmination of the Manhattan Project. The site is open to the public only 2 days each year, on [View Full Entry]

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In 1898, in the Guadalupe Mountains of Southeastern New Mexico, a cowboy named Jim White saw what he thought was smoke rising in the distance. When he went closer he found that the “smoke” was literally millions of bats coming from a large hole in the ground. White and other locals knew of the hole, but no one had explored it. Concluding from the number of bats he saw that this must be a huge cave, White returned with a lantern and a crude rope ladder and descended into the hole. He spent the next 30 years making thousands of [View Full Entry]

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The first leg of our westward journey took us from Fernandina Beach FL to Ft. Gaines, GA, on the Alabama border. We stayed in a nice campground on the banks of Lake Walter F. George, and played the golf course in the George Bagby State Park. The next stop was Montgomery, AL, where we spent a pleasant evening listening to the tornado warning sirens. Fortunately, no tornadoes came our way, but thunderstorms did knock out the power for several hours in the middle of the night. The third day found us at the Lefleurs Bluff State Park in downtown Jackson, [View Full Entry]

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The Little Bighorn is a small tributary of the Bighorn River flowing through the prairie grasslands of southwestern Montana. On June 25, 1876, on a ridge over this little river, was fought one American history's most legendary battles. "Boy Wonder" General George Armstrong Custer (at 25, he is the youngest man ever to attain the rank of Major General) and about 245 soldiers from his 7th Cavalry were killed in a battle with a much larger force of Cheyenne and Lakota Indians. It was a battle that lasted almost all day, beginning down near the river and culminating on Last Stand [View Full Entry]

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In 1872, President U. S. Grant signed a bill designating Yellowstone the world’s first national park. At over 2.2 million acres, it is larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined. Although the park has some beautiful mountains, rivers, lakes and waterfalls (over 100 of them), it is most notable for its thermal features. About 600,000 years ago an enormous volcanic eruption created a 1,300 square mile caldera (crater), one of the world’s largest. By comparison, the one created by the Mount St. Helens eruption was only a couple of square miles. Much of the hole was eventually filled with lava, and [View Full Entry]

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Our first stop back in the US was just across the border in Idaho at the lakeside home of our friends Terry Litfin and Linda Monks, where we were joined by Glen and Lori Nyberg. The six of us had served together in May as volunteer campground hosts at Nehalem Bay State Park in Oregon. The house sits on 65 wooded acres surrounding a scenic lake, and has been in Linda's family for a hundred years. We spent a wonderful 4 days here golfing, boating, fishing, hiking and just kicking back and enjoying friends. Next stop was about a hundred miles [View Full Entry]

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