Category Archives: USA

Close Encounter with an Igneous Intrusion

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I’ll be the first to admit, I am easy prey when it comes to the “power of suggestion.” So I still can’t look at a pile of mashed potatoes without thinking back to Richard Dreyfuss’ mashed potato sculpture in the 1977 Steven Spielberg hit, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  When someone says “This means something. This is important,” as Dreyfuss’ character Roy did in the movie, I’m open to exploring the “why.”

I first learned about Wyoming’s Devils Tower from Spielberg’s movie. For those either too young or may have forgotten, both scientists and Dreyfuss’ character are led to the tower by images and GPS coordinates broadcast by the aliens as their chosen landing Continue reading →

Confessions of a Sturgis Lurker

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I confess to having a bit of a fascination about riding a motorcycle, a sport which seems to ride right along that fine line between the idea of an exhilarating thrill ride with the wind in my hair and sun on my cheeks, to the reality of fear of potential defacing and dismemberment of my body parts. But those tenuous skinny green branches of the tree Continue reading →

South Dakota’s Badlands: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

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I encountered a whole lot of good, a little taste of bad, and a few days of ugly on my trip through South Dakota’s badlands. I’ll start with the good, which was the Badlands National Park itself.

This park of 244,000 + acres exceeded my expectations. Photos I have seen in the past gave me the impression that I would be driving through some monotone beige rolling hills that undulated out to the horizon. With a name like “Badlands” one expects a Continue reading →

The Tracker is a Regular Bison Wrangler!

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There is more to see in the Black Hills of Dakota than just Mount Rushmore. (And I still can’t say that without winding out the old Beatles lyric, “Somewhere in the Black Mountain Hills of Dakota there lived a young boy named Rocky Racoon.”)

Mount Rushmore acts as the cornerstone to a well traveled loop that most commonly begins in Keystone, SD, drops down along the Iron Mountain Road, loops through Custer State Park, and back up along the Needles Parkway. This recommended loop is Continue reading →

Defining Our Founding Fathers

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Visiting Mount Rushmore has never made an appearance on my bucket list. After living in Atlanta for eight years near Stone Mountain, seeing the sculpture designed and initiated by the same artist carved into the granite mountain, my thoughts were “Impressive feat, but I don’t need to make a special trip.” However, with two national parks within a 75 mile radius, it got bumped up the list. Continue reading →

South Dakota’s Wind Cave

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It doesn’t take long after crossing the state line into South Dakota to reach the first of the state’s two national parks (Parks with a capital “P” of which there are 59 in the NPS.) A quick pass through the town of Hot Springs, and I am crossing the park boundary before I know it. Research has indicated that the town of Hot Springs is “HSINO,” (hot springs in name only) as the only source for the spring is a kids pool that is warm, at best. So I skip the pool and go straight for the park. Continue reading →

“Give Me Weed, Whites, and Wine…”

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My friend and frequent supporter of this blog recently reminded me of a song from my youth, “Willin'” written by Little Feat’s founder Lowell George, but made even more mainstream by Linda Ronstadt. Since Rhonda’s reference, I can’t get the song out of my head as I reflect on my summer spent in Colorado.

I’ve been fortunate to spend the entire summer chasing 70 degree temps while the rest of the US swelters through one of the hottest summers on record, and my dear family celebrates a cooling trend at 98. But my “summer in Colorado” has not been without its Continue reading →

On Linking the Lakes and Locating the Lost

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One might think that with a name like Rocky Mountain National Park, it would be all about the mountain peaks, right? After all, the park is made up of mountain ranges with 78 peaks exceeding 12,000 ft, so one can expect a spectacular mountain view anywhere you go. In fact, that’s the difference between the west side with more heavily forested views, versus the east side marked with stark mountain cirques carved by glacial ice, deep canyons, and jagged spires. Continue reading →

The Newly Wed and the Nearly Dead

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After spending almost a week on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park, I still hadn’t had enough of the mountains. Steamboat was beautiful, but the ridiculously expensive RV park where I was staying was too far in the opposite direction from the hiking trails, requiring a tedious drive through traffic to get to any areas suitable for a hike. A look at the map reveals it won’t be that far to backtrack from the I25 corridor to Continue reading →

Red Feather Lakes

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In order to get myself back over the Rockies from Steamboat Springs, I decide to take a more northerly direction up near the Wyoming state line through Red Feather Lakes. It’s a place I know little to nothing about, but have long been intrigued. There’s not much information on the area. In fact, it is a challenge to even figure out which roads are best to take and where to go once I get there. I get by with a little help from my friends… Continue reading →