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Tag: free camping

Canyonlands and Natural Bridges – Exploring the Land of Rock

Canyonlands and Natural Bridges – Exploring the Land of Rock

Canyonlands is the last Utah National Park that we visited. It’s Utah’s largest park and has some of the most challenging and remote terrain in the nation. Canyonlands is part of the Colorado Plateau—a large region known for canyons, buttes, mesas, and other dramatic rock formations that have been carved by water and erosion over millions of years. It wins the award for best named park. There’s even a formation called Paul Bunyan’s Potty. How’s that for descriptive? Pin this…

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7 Reasons Not to Miss Capitol Reef National Park

7 Reasons Not to Miss Capitol Reef National Park

We weren’t sure what to expect at Capitol Reef National Park. It’s quite literally Utah’s middle child of National Parks. Zion and Bryce are found in the west, while Arches and Canyonlands lie to the east. Many people pass over this park in favor of the more visited ones but we think they’re missing out. And that’s not just middle child syndrome talking. Pin this post for later > While some of Utah’s parks have an abundance of a specific formation…

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Best of Bryce Canyon National Park

Best of Bryce Canyon National Park

If Salvador Dali and Dr. Seuss created a place together, it would look like Bryce Canyon National Park. We think that everyone should experience it at least once in their life. Bryce is part whimsy, part eerie, and part stop-you-in-your-tracks stunning. Plus you get to say hoodoos a lot, which is just fun. What the Heck are Hoodoos? The native inhabitants of the area thought that hoodoos were people who had been turned to stone by the trickster coyote. It’s…

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5 Awesome Things to Do in Zion National Park

5 Awesome Things to Do in Zion National Park

Compared to Nevada’s muted color palette, Utah is shockingly bright. Zion National Park is the most vibrant park we’ve visited yet! It’s like a kaleidoscope of color. The rocky peaks and cliffs are bright red and orange with bands of black and white stripes. The sky is pretty much the exact color of the sky blue crayon. And lush green vegetation grows near the water sources. Even the sand at Zion is brilliant. Pin this post for later > There are myriads…

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A Great Rescue in Great Basin National Park

A Great Rescue in Great Basin National Park

Great Basin National Park. The name makes us think that the park will be mostly flat, centered around one of the many basins scattered across Nevada. Once again, Nevada had a surprise for us. Great Basin NP is actually centered around the Snake Mountain Range. There’s a huge diversity of landscapes and ecosystems to see in Nevada’s only national park. Lehman Caves Another surprise was finding out that Great Basin NP has a cave system to explore. All explorations are…

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Cigarettes and Sage – Exploring Nevada

Cigarettes and Sage – Exploring Nevada

Nevada just might be the most surprising state we’ve been to yet. This wasn’t our first rodeo in Nevada. Okay, there weren’t any rodeos, but that would’ve been fun. Our previous visits to the Silver State were to Las Vegas—where the majority of visitors go. This time we wanted to explore the land and history of Nevada. We wanted to know what Nevada is like outside the giant concrete maze and flashing neon lights of Vegas. Pause for a moment…

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Vulcans and Volcanoes

Vulcans and Volcanoes

Admittedly we had some post eclipse blues after watching the sun become blotted out by the moon. I mean how do you follow-up day becoming night at 10:30 am? It turns out that hiking up volcanoes is a good next move. After watching the eclipse from the path of totality in Central OR we headed down to Lassen Volcanic National Park in Northern CA. This is another park that we’ve never really heard anyone talk about. Honestly, our knowledge of…

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Smoke on the Mountain – Mount Rainier National Park

Smoke on the Mountain – Mount Rainier National Park

We had one main goal for our visit to Mount Rainier National Park: See Mount Rainier. We lived 3 hours away from the mountain for over a decade and the most we’d seen was a glimpse of Rainier’s snow covered top from a distance. We’d never been up close and personal with the behemoth. Seeing Mount Rainier sounds pretty easy right? It’s a giant mountain after all—just look up! Well it didn’t turn out to be quite that simple. Wildfires…

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Secrets and Surprises in Washington State

Secrets and Surprises in Washington State

We experienced déjà vu driving through eastern Washington on our way to North Cascades National Park. It reminded us a lot of North Dakota. There’s a similar abrupt change from farmland to rocky dry wilderness. We were initially worried that the free campsite we’d selected was in the middle of a giant wheat field. I’m talking wheat in all directions as far as you can see. Suddenly the wheat fields turned into rocky craggy formations. We found our camp in…

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Weird and Wild Adventures in North Dakota

Weird and Wild Adventures in North Dakota

Our first two days back on the road and heading west started well and seemed to help us achieve our balance goals. The first day we made it from Green Bay, WI to central North Dakota. The free campsite we’d picked turned out to be exactly what we needed. Our day ended by watching the sunset over the rolling grassy hills of North Dakota. Enchanted Highway We pushed to cover a lot of ground the first day so that we…

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