Enjoying Our Dash

  It has already been a busy 2025 for us. We closed on our new house in early March. We spent most of March and April busy with contractors putting the finishing touches on the place. Then it was time to start cleaning up Dash and getting him ready for our summer adventure, as well as, stocking up on supplies. This summer we are heading back to a few locations we have been and lived before.  We will get to see some friends and lots of family.  Our travels will take us to Northern Michigan, Maine, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Here is a snapshot of our travel plans. Along the way, I will get a chance to go to several amusement parks. I love roller coasters and one of my favorite parks on our route is Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. I'll be also be visiting some of the Six Flags parks and Kings Dominion in Virginia. It has been a while since I've been to theses parks, so it will be interesting to see how they have changed.  What is on the list for your summer p...

Just in case you were wondering, we accomplished our goal of sleeping at least one night in every state in the nation!!

After we left Wyoming, we had several more National Parks on our list.   Next up was Rocky Mountain National park in Colorado.   We stayed just outside of the park so we had some beautiful views.  As we traveled on the park roads, we saw this guy. What was even more amazing was later that evening, we saw this, in our campground just steps from Dash. Next up was the Great Sand Dunes National Park, also in Colorado.  This park is small but the views are really neat.  Check out this swirl cloud formation as we were entering the park.  I have never seen anything like this! The dune is approximately 741 feet tall.  At first it doesn't look very big, but when you see people walking towards it, and then see the little specs at the top of the dune, you get a sense of just how big it is. It was really cool to see the high plains in this area.  We were at about 8100 foot elevation in the picture below. We also visited Mammoth Caves in Kentucky....

Just south of the south entrance of Yellowstone is another amazing National Park.  If you go to Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons is not to be missed. This parks offers amazing views and tons of wildlife. We had the opportunity to stay in one of the parks campground, Colter Bay.  It was very nice being so close to the action. The star of the show at the Grand Tetons is the mountain peaks. Even on a hazy evening, the peaks are still beautiful. One of the absolute highlights of the Grand Tetons, and perhaps the whole trip, was getting to see some moose!  The first trip to the area where the moose are known to frequent the moose were being shy.  Look closely at the middle of the first picture.  Do you see the moose hiding in the trees? We returned to the area a hour later and were treated to several of the moose out on the bank of the creek in full view.   It was truly exciting to see these guys.  We had another encounter with some wildlife as we were he...

Two years ago when we were at Yellowstone, the northern section was closed due to extensive flooding.  So we headed back there to see more of beautiful Yellowstone.   We had a chance to see some amazing thermals, water falls and wildlife.   The first day we went early in the morning when the temperature was in the mid 40s.  It was amazing how much more visual the thermals were.  We could see the steam rising along the roads as we drove through the park.  On our way up the the northern part of the park (Mammoth Hot Springs) we made a few stops to just take in all the Yellowstone has to offer. The Beryl Springs area was very animated first thing in the morning. The Artist Paintpots area was just beautiful. The Roaring Mountain was really cool.  The sights at Mammoth Hot Springs were well worth the trip. We also saw some gorgeous waterfalls and rivers.  We saw so much wildlife it was amazing.  We discovered that the bison like to hango...