People always ask me if I can pick a favorite destination— and I usually say something to the affect of ‘most of the National Parks are pretty spectacular, and...

Driving from California to Arizona, I passed by some very large sand dunes: the royally-named Imperial Sand Dunes. As I approached on a long, straight road, it was apparent...

The idea to go to Anza Borrego Desert State Park came from my 78-year-old father. HE got the idea from Kelly Ripa, the daytime talk show host-- whose show...

I have long-admired Eleanor Roosevelt.  It’s impossible not to admire a woman who began her workday at 4 AM, and often stayed up late into the night replying to mail...

I will start out by saying that I am not a 'Civil War Guy.' If you've spent any time at sights that were critical to this bloody and epic...

When outside of the city centers, Nebraska can be summed up this way: CORN. As far as the eye can see. Driving into a rural part of the state at...

Dinosaur National Monument is aptly named. I’d never seen as many dinosaur bones in my entire life as I saw there (!!!!!)— it was a surreal experience. This national monument, straddling...

This was a real ‘wheel-jerk’ moment.  Driving from the remote Craters of the Moon National Monument to my next destination in the mountains of Colorado, when crossing through a small...

Craters of the Moon National Monument had become a running joke in my van.  Not because I’d been there and didn’t like it— but because I never seemed to be...

If you've ever lived in the Pacific Northwest, the rule of thumb is: you HAVE to get outside in the summer every chance you get-- since the winters are...

Sometimes, you need to do a little exploring in your OWN backyard.  This summer, I got to take my van on mini-adventures around the Pacific Northwest, an area I knew...

Monument Valley is first and foremost a sacred place for the Navajo people-- its Navajo name is: Tsé Biiʼ Ndzisgaii, meaning "Valley of the Rocks." It is also a...

Mesa Verde had been on my bucket list for a long time. The most complete archeological preserve in the United States, with over 4,500 active digging sites, Mesa Verde...

Carlsbad, New Mexico is at the crossroads of Texas and New Mexico-- and feels like it-- so isolated, oil trucks were the most frequent vehicle one passed on the...

When approaching Big Bend National Park, I felt like I was approaching the end of the earth itself. The signs of civilization long in my rearview, the open expanse...

Organ Pipe National Monument is the only place in the United States where the Senita cactus (the organ pipe cactus) grows, because it is directly on the border with...

It was a rainy spring day when I stopped at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. The entirety of the monument was one large structure-- but that was all that...

Bandelier National Monument is one of the bunch of consistently-underated (and probably under-visited) National Monuments out there. Like so many others, it wasn't on our radar, but driving around...

When eating a veggie burger in Amarillo, Texas, we got to talking to another home-on-wheels couple who were traveling nurses. And we learned that day to ALWAYS listen to...

Cliff dwellings are deceptively-simple: people took residence in naturally hollowed-out caves. End of story, right? But some things you don't consider initially think about when viewing these cave homes is...

National Parks are so famed, they tend to overshadow National Monuments-- but I'm learning that National Monuments often contain similar amounts of grandeur-- and even very similar rock formations....

The beauty of being on the road constantly is the ability to go places you'd never heard of until a day prior. We rolled into Taos, New Mexico to...

I didn't expect much. I figured Death Valley would be a desolate plane of nothingness, given that it's the lowest point in the continent, clocking in at 200-some feet...

As National Parks go, Joshua Tree couldn't be "hotter"-- literally and figuratively. Joshua Tree is a popular National Park, with attendance booming in the past 10 years, partly because...