We left Seattle around 1:30 and drove to Glacier, WA, battling the stop and go afternoon traffic that seems inevitable near any large city these days. Arrived at the Blue T Lodge just west of Glacier around 4:30 PM and checked in at the bar in the adjacent Chair 9 pizza restaurant. The bartender had my reservation and, key in hand, we made our way to our room on the second floor. Lodge room was nicely furnished though without TV reception, refrigerator, microwave, or air conditioning, none of which was a necessity, but all were missed at one time or another. The saving grace was a reasonably fast WiFi connection. As it turned out, we were just in time for the 4th of July parade that started at the restaurant and consisted of a couple of ... read more

Friday, 12/29.One reason we stayed at Ft. Hunter-Leggitt was its location near the Nacimiento-Ferguson Road, a very narrow and curvy road through the mountains to the Big Sur region of the Pacific coast. Due to highway 1 being closed just south of Big Sur at that time, this was the closest access to highway # 1, the Pacific Coast Highway, south of Monterey. This was a very scenic route that was the quickest way to the coast and several of the California state parks that we hoped to be able to hike in. Unfortunately, this was the start of the weekend and about a million other people had the same idea. Couple that with the fact that most of the hiking trails on the inland side of the highway were closed due to damage from fires ... read more

Monday, 12/25, Christmas.Drove down the very rough, curvy, dirt and gravel Titus Canyon Road to Red Pass and the trailhead for the Thimble Peak hike. The trail was about 2.5 miles long, one way, with an elevation gain of around 1,200 feet. With several significant ups and downs, the net elevation gain was more like a very strenuous 1,800 ft. The summit of Thimble peak is 6,381 ft. above sea level and is the highest point for miles around, thus the views were breathtaking in every direction. Probably the best hike of our trip. After returning to our car, we drove on down the twelve miles of even rougher, curvier road through Titus Canyon. Just to make things interesting, two minutes after starting down the road, a low tire pressure warning popped up on the info ... read more

In mid September of 2017 Anne and I traveled to the southwest with Anne's sister, Jane, to visit the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona and Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah. After these visits, and after seeing Jane off on her return flight, Anne and I went on to do a bit of hiking in Idaho. Below is a recap of where we went, what we saw, and a bunch of pictures from the trip. On Friday, September 8th, Jane flew from Richmond to Atlanta while we flew from Greenville. We met in Atlanta and flew on together to Las Vegas where we rented a car for the drive on to the North Rim. Our flight was supposed to arrive around 12:30 but was delayed a bit over an hour which put us ... read more

Geo: 32.7157, -117.162We arrived at our motel in San Diego inthe early afternoon but were able to check in early. Our motel was very near the Old Town section of San Diego so we walked over to it and got a few more strolling miles in sightseeing in that area. After our Old Town walk, we hopped in the car for what we thought would be a quick scouting trip to the rental car return location and to find a gas station to fill up the car before returning it the next morning. This turned out to be much harder than it should have been. We probably drove in several ever expanding circles before finding the first gas station only to discover that it only accepted debit cards or cash. Since I do not like using ... read more