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Denali National Park
As usual with our National Parks, we loved Denali! We stayed inside at two of the park’s campgrounds which we feel enhances our experience. For the workweek, we dry camped in heavily treed Riley Creek and explored the front country. Denali is 6 million acres of pristine wilderness. There is one 90-mile road leading into the park but you are only allowed to drive the first 15 miles in your vehicle. In the first 15 miles, you can visit the sled dog kennels. These Alaskan huskies work hard with winter park operations but in the summer enjoy getting pets from visitors. There are also several established trails. We hiked the…
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The Bears of Brooks Falls
Soon after deciding to go to Alaska, we started researching how to see brown bears. Katmai and Lake Clark National Parks are two of the easiest places to do this, although neither is on the road system so easy is relative, and it’s certainly not cheap. There are several guided tour options, but we just had to see the stars of Fat Bear Week fishing at Brooks Falls in Katmai NP. A day trip to Brooks Falls requires a float plane and the closest launching point is Homer. We went with Alaska Bear Trips out of Anchorage because of a coupon. And even though that was a questionable decision, our…
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Kenai Fjords National Park & Seward, Alaska
We spent the week of July 4th in the coastal town of Seward and loved it! Like most of the small towns we’ve been to in Alaska, the campgrounds and RV Parks are in prime locations and at the center of all the action. In Seward, the waterfront land along Resurrection Bay isn’t strong enough for building, so the town has a row of municipal campgrounds and a nice walking path connecting them all. At $45 per night for parking lot-style dry camping, it’s not cheap, but what a view!! We were about 30ft from the water at high tide and it was one of the best views we’ve ever…
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Glacier Hiking At Wrangell-St.Elias National Park
One of the things that Michael wanted to do most in Alaska was to walk on a glacier and I think that the Root Glacier in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park might be the only place to do that without a tour. WSE is the largest National Park in the US, the size of 6 Yellowstones, and has 9 of the 16 highest peaks in North America. It’s the most remote place that we’ll be visiting in Alaska and getting there was part of the fun! First, we drove to the town of Chitina, a few hours from anywhere you’ve ever heard of. Then we traveled one of the most infamous…
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Heading South: Lexington, KY & New River Gorge National Park, WV
Even though we’ve been parked in NC for over a month now, our blog is still stuck in Chicago. Back in November on our way home, we stopped in Kentucky for horses and bourbon and in West Virginia to visit the country’s newest National Park. In Lexington, we spent a week at the Kentucky Horse Park, which is an “equine theme park” owned by the state of Kentucky. They were already in their winter season which meant less was happening with the horses, but we paid cheaper fees and also had Christmas decorations in our campsite! We spent a morning exploring the horse park’s barns and museums. And then spent…
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Return To The San Juans, Colorado
I had been planning to earn 7 more state stickers for the map on the side of our RV as we zigzagged across the middle of the country back to NC but Michael just wanted to stay in Colorado. We compromised and stayed until mid-October. Much later there could be snow on the high mountain passes. We should still be able to earn 5 stickers, visiting 2 states for the first time. Ridgway State Park gave us easy access to the San Juan Mountains in southwest Colorado. There are multiple campgrounds and I was able to get us a full hookup site at Pa-Ca-Chu-Puk on the Uncompaghre River. Ridgway was…
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Rocky Mountain National Park
A few months ago we were lamenting our mistake of skipping over Rocky Mountain National Park, all because of one closed campground that we wanted to stay at. From Taos, NM to Jasper, AB, this has been the year of the Rocky Mountains and we didn’t even visit the namesake National Park. So, we returned to Colorado and stayed at Lavern M. Johnson Park during the last week of September. This city park is in the teeny tiny town of Lyons, about 30 minutes east of Rocky. The small campground was just a parking lot but it had full hookups and was within walking distance of everything the adorable town…
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South Dakota’s Badlands & Black Hills
We had two great weeks in South Dakota. The weather has a huge effect on how much we like an area and it was absolutely beautiful when we visited in mid-September. We started out in the town of Deadwood in the northern Black Hills, dry camping Saturday night in the Days of ’76 museum parking lot which was not free but was within walking distance of all the action. Deadwood is an old mining town notorious for its lawlessness and is still packed with bars and casinos. We watched an entertaining show at Saloon No. 10, where Wild Bill was gambling the night he was killed. The show ended with…
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Theodore Roosevelt National Park
We’re slowly working on visiting all National Parks and RVing in every state. But a stop at Theodore Roosevelt National Park and nearby Dickinson, North Dakota was special for me because it’s where my Grandpa was born and raised. We had a dry campsite at Cottonwood Campground inside the park booked for the week of Labor Day. Luckily as soon as we arrived and dropped the trailer, we drove the scenic loop, visited some overlooks, and saw a lot of animals because a few hours later an apocalyptic amount of wildfire smoke showed up and settled in for several days. We only spent one night dry-camping before moving to an…
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Banff, Canada
I don’t have too many photos to share of our 2 weeks in the town of Banff. The best thing to do is visit Moraine Lake and Lake Louise, and we’d been there the week before. There were a few days of smoke and/or rain and Michael took a work trip out of Calgary. Banff is the main food/lodging hub for Banff National Park visitors. The Tunnel Mountain campgrounds have over 1000 RV/tent campsites and are so popular that our entire Canadian Rockies route was planned around the 2 weeks I was able to book at the end of our trip only after school was back in session. The Trailer…
