This post will be far more spare than five days spread across these two cities suggests because the bulk of our time in these spots was to visit with family - first to attend a wedding in Seattle and then to visit other relatives at their home in Spokane.
That doesn’t mean that we didn’t see anything at all, though!
Read MoreWhen I dream of hitting the road for an extended road trip to just go and explore without any time constraints, I mostly picture spots out west. It makes sense. There is ample open space, more solitude, fewer cities. I often picture spots from this particular trip - most particularly Banff, in Canada’s Alberta province, nestled in the Canadian Rocky Mountains.
Read MoreWe drove for about two and a half hours to reach Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. The first twenty minutes or so of the drive, down from the heights of Lincoln National Forest, were pretty and filled with trees. For the next two hours, our route took us along the east and then north sides of the Tularosa Basin, home of the White Sands Missile Range. The route was, in a word, desolate. Driving for two hours with basically nothing in any direction left me feeling isolated, as if our car’s interior was the entire world.
Read MoreWe spent the fifth day of our trip exploring spots very near to our accommodation in Cloudcroft, nestled in the Lincoln National Forest. In fact, one of our destinations was even walkable from our B&B! You would think that our elevation in Cloudcroft - about 8,600 feet - was plenty high enough but no, we headed further up into the mountains, a far cry from the prior day’s visit to the low elevation of the desert!
Read MoreWe have both had multiple opportunities as children and adults to view various petroglyphs around the United States and still find them fascinating and mesmerizing. For those less familiar, a petroglyph is a general term for any (human-made) rock carving, typically noteworthy for those from the pre-historic era. Petroglyphs, often referred to as “carvings” outside of the United States, were often made by using a chisel and hammerstone (or similar objects) to carve away the surface of the rock-face, leaving behind the lighter-colored rock underneath, thus illuminating the image.
Read MoreFor those readers unfamiliar with Roswell, it holds a place in popular imagination for some or as practically a holy mecca for others. What is certain is that in 1947, something crashed to the earth and a cattle rancher discovered it in his field, located about 75 miles outside of the city of Roswell.
Read MoreThe best way to describe Living Desert State Park is as a desert botanical garden and zoo. Near the parking lot is a visitor’s center that includes all of the highlights of state park visitors’ center: information to read about the area, interactive displays, animal skeletons, and other touchable items. The back exit of the visitor’s center opens out to the 1.3 mile self-guided trek through a microcosm of the Chihuahuan Desert.
Read MoreThe Guadalupe Mountains stand as a big, bulky mass rising out of the otherwise endlessly flat landscape of west Texas. They are startling and unexpected. The mountain range is also enormous, home to the highest peak in all of Texas, Guadalupe Peak, which measures 8,751 feet. For anyone who has ever been in a desert, grassland, or anywhere else that is very, very flat, you have likely experienced the inability to understand size and distance. Without any reference points, a mountain can appear close, and you can still spend an hour or more driving towards it. This was definitely our experience of these particular mountains!
Read MoreEnchanting is a word often used to describe New Mexico. I’m not certain that the English language has the right word to describe New Mexico, but that one might come closest.
In my years living on the East Coast of the United States, I have come across very few people who have visited New Mexico. Periodic stories emerge in the news about Americans who purportedly think New Mexico is in Mexico. True or exaggerated, those stories hit a very real nerve: New Mexico is probably underappreciated as a destination in the United States.
Read MoreThere are certain places you suspect you’ll love and so you go there. Sometimes you are disappointed. But sometimes your suspicions were right. The latter is Colorado for us. We love hiking, mountains, non-humid but weather warm enough to enjoy the outdoors, and so for years, Colorado was on our list of places to visit. Luckily, a few friends from high school moved there and gave us an excuse to visit…a few times!
Read MoreThis trip is special to me in that it was the first real solo trip my then-boyfriend, now-husband, Dustin, and I took. At this point, we had been dating 6 1/2 years and had lived together almost 4 of those years, most of which were as impoverished, no-travel-funds college students biding our time until the student loans would come due :-/. Later in the year – on Christmas Day – we would get engaged. I’d traveled to many of Arizona’s key landmarks during elementary school, but Dustin hadn’t been before.
Read MoreThe eleven days of our trip were spent with a perfect variety of activities - hiking along the coast and picnicking on the beach at sunset, touring Napa and Sonoma valley wineries, exploring several Spanish Missions, visiting the Monterey Aquarium, and more. The best part was that feeling of familiarity that you only get in a place that reminds you of where you grew up - where the visage of the rocky coast and the smell and cushioned forest floor of pine needles on hikes just feel right.
Read MoreThe California coast (Pacific Coast Highway, Route 1) is one of the prettiest drives, no matter what part of the state you’re in (I’ve done the entire route in various pieces over the years). It isn’t fast, but it isn’t meant to be. This route is about the journey, not the destination. Catching it on a clear day is a must, as the coast is also given to fog frequently. Given the mountain ranges, fog is often present in the morning and evenings and burns off during the day, though not always. Luckily, after morning fog, our northward drive was fog-free!
Read MoreWe had arrived in time for sunset and wandered the short distance to the Mendocino Headlands at the end of the town. We watched as the sun set, the mirroring and, finally, blending of colors along the horizon where the ocean and sky meet for the briefest of moments before the sun disappears and the ocean transforms into a nighttime attire of opaque black.
Read MoreHaving imbibed enough for the day - the amount of alcohol consumed during tastings adds up! - we decided to enjoy the outdoors with a hike at the Bothe-Napa State Park and hiked the Redwood Trail. Fun fact: this park is home to the most inland coastal redwood trees. The trail is 3.3 miles out-and-back and was pretty sparsely populated since of course the wineries are the prime attraction for the area. After an exhausting day, we decided to return to our B&B and eat our leftover pizza poolside.
Read MoreWe spent a couple of days in and around Monterey. We visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which we arrived at early in the day before the crowds. It is one of my favorite aquariums I have been to. As is also the case outside the confines of the aquarium, the coastal area has a lot of seals, sea otters, and sea lions. We grabbed lunch at the cafe at the aquarium and were able to get a window seat to watch sea lions doing what they do best, which appears to be superbly lounging with occasional dips in the water.
Read MoreIt’s an interesting thing how seals can be laying en masse along the beach and yet be so still that you can nearly walk up to them. Oops! We were probably much closer than we should have been before we even saw them. On a sad note, a little ways down the beach was also a dead seal pup with waves washing up and over him.
Read MoreIn our California honeymoon blog series, we described visiting three missions: San Francisco Solano, San Juan Bautista, and Carmel. This blog explains a bit of the history that led to the building of the missions in California and what their impact was on the native and newly arrived communities there.
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