California’s Central Valley heated up by mid-afternoon to 100 degrees as we drove through miles and miles of fruit orchards in rural irrigated countryside dotted with historic Victorian farmhouses. Leaving the comfortable summer environment of 70 degree days in fog and sun on the Monterey Peninsula is always difficult when the weather hits upper 90s…
road trip
Category Archives for road trip.
Hot Desert, Cool Rocks, Arches National Park part 3
Hiking around the Utah desert for hours when it was in the mid-90s in mid-May made my head hot. Walking in a slot canyon an idea came to me as I touched the cool sandstone cliffs on a three feet wide trail. My face would cool down if I rested it against the rock. Rock…
Road Tripping on $30 hotel nights with IHG and slightly more with other hotel brands
I am planning for cheap hotel stays using a variety of tactics on my upcoming two week road trip from Monterey to Denver via Salt Lake City and back via Las Vegas to attend a Hyatt-MGM partnership event. My road trip planning is not meant to be the focus, but rather the tactics I use…
The Windows at Arches National Park
The Windows section of Arches National Park is the one area to visit if time is short for your park tour. Two hours in the Arches National Park will allow for a one hour hike around the Windows section to see some of the most spectacular arches in the world. After an hour in Arches,…
Pinnacles National Park west side entrance
Pinnacles National Park is 60 miles southeast of where I live in Monterey, California. Pinnacles refer to the massive rock spires and crags dotting the landscape of the park in the Gabilan Range. This is condor bird country and there are talus caves; large boulder ceiling caves in narrow canyons filled with bat colonies of…
Earth’s oldest trees in Great Basin National Park Nevada
Bristlecone pine groves with the oldest living trees on Earth, the southernmost glacier in the U.S., one of the darkest places in the lower 48 states at night and the cleanest air in the continental U.S. are attributes of Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada. Created in 1986, Great Basin National Park is one of the…
Kings Canyon National Park – The mountains are calling and I must go
‘The mountains are calling and I must go.’ – John Muir California State Route 180 is one of the great road drives in the state. You need a car in good working condition for this drive, particularly in July and August when it can reach 110 degrees in the foothills approaching the Kings Canyon and Sequoia…