Cycling – The Destinators

Death Valley National Park

We’d really wanted to see Death Valley National Park on this trip – that was right up at the top of our list of reasons for undertaking this repeat visit across the country. Once again, due to the government shutdown we didn’t quite know what to expect, and up-to-date information was hard to find. However, given our recent experience at Joshua Tree, and considering that from Bakersfield we were less than 3 hours from the park, we headed over to check it out. And once again, we were pleasantly surprised! The Death Valley Natural History Association is a non-profit that supports all of the goals of DVNP. They are funding park staff salaries during the shutdown, and the park was nearly fully open! And most of the closures were due to planned improvements or repairs to flood-damaged roads, unrelated to the current budget issues. Our heartfelt thanks to the DVNHA and all of the staff we met in the visitor center and campground for enabling us to have an amazing visit in Death Valley

San Diego, CA

I’ve “known” Dennard from the Blues Guitar Unleashed forums since he first lit up the stage at the BGU Live jam at Lake Arrowhead, CA in 2018. I wasn’t at that event, but his original songs and charismatic stage presence brought him immediate fame within our online community. This man is a player!

Sue and I first crossed paths with Dennard in person at the 2023 BGU regional jam in Grand Rapids, and again in 2024 in Albuquerque. We were looking forward to jamming a few tunes with Dennard again earlier this month in Parker, but, alas, at the last minute he could not attend due to a family visit. We’d also been looking forward to meeting up with Dennard here in SoCal around this time one year ago, and that was one of the visits confounded by our sudden change of plans. Not this time!

Rancho Palos Verdes – reunion

We all met on the same day – June 23, 1984. Judy, Doug and I (along with 9 other excited bicyclists) arrived in Portland, OR for the start of TransAm Eastbound 0624, a bike tour organized by Bikecentennial (now Adventure Cycling). Self-supported, we’d pedal our bikes across the country from Portland to Virginia Beach, carrying all our own gear on the bikes, for the next 90 days. You do get to know people pretty well by being together on the road, through super highs and lows, in that much time!

Everglades National Park

Slash pine ridges along the saw grass prairie of the Shark River Slough

Although we were glad to help my mom through her first-ever experience with surgery (at age 91!), we had to defer the latter 2/3rds of our planned southwest adventure. By the time my mom was stable (which happened very quickly, given the possibilities), there was no longer enough time to get back to any of those southwest plans. But we didn’t really need to rush home. Could we find a different adventure? What if we had planned a trip to the southeast… Is there something we would explore in Florida that we haven’t yet visited on our many family visits to Melbourne? This was a no-brainer – Everglades National Park!

Kouchibouguac National Park

The Kouichibouguac National Park was designated in 1969 to preserve and protect a unique piece of New Brunswick’s Coastal Plain Ecosystem. The park has barrier islands that change with the tide and the wind, short sand dunes that are equally dynamic, lagoons, estuaries, salt marshes and tidal rivers that host aquatic and sea bird populations, ancient bogs and fields, and forests regenerating from past timber harvests. Its name is hard to spell, and pronouncing it is difficult enough that we needed coaching – fortunately, this was available from the helpful park staff.

Manitoulin Island

Lake Manitou from the Cup & Saucer cliffs

Look at any map of Ontario, and there’s a curious island at the north end of Lake Huron. It’s Manitoulin Island and we’d never heard of it. And it has a dotted line attached to its southern shore. Ferry! This needed some research.

It turns out Manitoulin Island is the largest island in a freshwater lake in the world. Interestingly, Manitou Lake (in the photo above) is the largest freshwater lake on an island in the world. The population (13,000) is a healthy mix of people of indigenous and European descent. Politically and culturally, the island is in North Ontario. Geologically – the Niagara Escarpment runs through it – it’s an extension of South Ontario. There are only 2 ways on or off the island – a swing bridge from Little Current to the mainland, and a ferry to and from the Bruce Peninsula that runs only in the summer. It sounded to us like a unique place worthy of exploration…

Elmore, VT

Our good friends Patti and Milo, whom we first met years ago out on the ski hill, are also RVer’s with a sense of adventure and a penchant for hiking and biking. Over dinner one night at the end of the ski season, we mentioned that we were thinking of exploring places closer to home in our RV this summer, and that, ironically, we’d never spent a night in our RV in Vermont except in our own driveway. That conversation evolved into a plan for a meet up for the four of us at Elmore State Park, just a bit north of where we all live in the Mad River Valley.

Wrangell-St Elias National Park

Regal Mountain and the Stairway Icefield

Wrangell-St Elias National Park and Preserve is the most superlative and unique-est we’ve ever visited. It’s the largest National Park in the US. At 13 million acres, it’s roughly 6 times the size of Yellowstone. It is surrounded on 3 sides by other parks including Glacier Bay National Park (US), as well as Canada’s Kluane National Park and Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park, creating an enormous international wilderness area. Mount St Elias is the tallest peak in the park at 18,008 ft and the second highest peak in the US (Denali is 20,308 ft). Mount St Elias is also 10 miles as the eagle or raven flies (we’ve not seen many crows in Alaska!) from the ocean, providing one of the highest reliefs in the world as well as a uniquely preserved ecosystem in its entirety. Established in 1980, Wrangell-St Elias is one of the most recent additions to the National Park Service.

Like most National Parks, WSE’s mission is to preserve and protect natural scenic beauty, wildlife populations and their habitats all while providing and balancing access and recreational opportunities by visitors. WSE also celebrates the region’s 20th century mining history. Unlike most National Parks, WSE also provides continued opportunities for the few small communities and the subsistence lifestyles of the people who live there – yes, people live deep in this wilderness, surrounded by the National Park.

Colorado National Monument

Colorado National Monument is one of the coolest places in Colorado we’d never heard of. It was late afternoon when our Google-Maps-suggested route took us close to this green splotch on the map. Oh, look, the Monument has a campground – so we set a course. Wow!

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Big Sky, MT – Reunion!

Back at the turn of the current century, 3 couples were trying to figure out how to move to Vermont and earn an income while living an outdoor oriented lifestyle – Dave and Sandra from eastern Massachusetts, Stan and Cyndee from the Berkshires in Massachusetts and Doug and me from Connecticut. We all met while skiing at Sugarbush and became fast friends – aka the 6-pack. We all achieved the goal and moved to the Mad River Valley between 2004 and 2006.

Fast forward 10 years and thoughts turned to retirement and coloring in the next chapter of our books. First Stan and Cyndee, then Dave and Sandra got hooked by the big mountain skiing at Big Sky, Montana and were gradually reeled in, ultimately moving to that delightful ski town. And Doug and I developed our current process for alternating Vermont skiing in the winter with these nomadic adventures in the summer. Sad to split the 6-pack? Yes. Fortunately, our respective retirement plans allow themselves to intersect from time to time. We’ve been out a couple of times in winter to ski, and twice now we’ve been able to stage our summer road trips to include a swing by this cool town, surrounded by mountains and National Parks – where our friends live.

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