Cycling – The Destinators

Voorhees, NJ

A coupling (dissasembling) travel tandem bicycle (Photo courtesy of Santana Cycles)

We met Steve and Marie about 40 years ago. We had just bought ourselves a tandem bicycle as a wedding present, a couple of months in advance of our wedding, in order to attend our very first Eastern Tandem Rally in the Finger Lakes Region of upstate New York. At this rally, with compatible styles and a similar pace, we kept running into another pair of first-timers, Steve and Marie from southern New Jersey, near Philadelphia. At this same rally, the four of us first ran into two more experienced tandem teams, also from South Jersey – our soon-to-be friends (as well as heroes and mentors), Sue and Al and Malcolm and Judy. We enjoyed multiple tandem meetups with this 8-pack (and various sub-sets thereof) over the next 15 or so years.

Mont Tremblant National Park

Mont Tremblant National Park is the oldest national park* in Quebec, the 3rd oldest in Canada and the 6th oldest in North America. Created in 1895 as Parc de la Montagne-Tremblante, its original purpose was to ‘conserve’ this beautiful area within the Laurentian Mountains, meaning manage reasonable use of resources like logging, which had been underway since the 1850’s. (This is as opposed to newer national parks’ definition of conservation which is to protect park resources from exploitation.) As a park employee described to us, all of the lakes were flooded in the spring to allow logs cut during the winter to be floated down long chains of lakes to the larger rivers to feed the lumber and pulp mills downstream. This form of logging was destructive to river ecosystems. That, along with the development of modern logging trucks, skidders and rail transport ended the log drives in the 1980’s. The area became officially Mont Tremblant National Park in 2001 with conservation (new definition) as its central focus.

Mauricie National Park

As Jacques Cartier National Park was all about protecting the river, Mauricie National Park is all about protecting the lakes. Yup, 150 of them…

South central PEI

As we drove across the beautiful and brilliantly engineered 8-mile-long Confederation Bridge between PEI and the mainland, we were entering PEI with a few time constraints – tickets to a show on 8/8, meetup with friends on 8/14 and don’t visit PEI National Park with its legendary crowds on a weekend – and a list of things we wanted to visit. Oh, and we had forgotten about the Canadian long weekend and so arrived just in time for that. Working up a schedule with all these constraints required a bit of creativity. (Check out PEI on our travel page in you’re interested in just how much creativity…)

There was was only 1 item on our list in the south central part of PEI. However, given our driving routes to work around the constraints we got to explore this area and found a few gems.

Prince Edward Island National Park – the north coast

One of Parks Canada’s primary goals is to protect the ecology and culture representing 39 distinct natural regions across the country. Toward this end, Prince Edward Island National Park was established to include some of the most endangered and incredibly beautiful areas of the north coast of PEI. The park consists of three sections, each with controlled access points allowing for public access to these very popular attractions while minimizing stress on the fragile ecosystems that made them so incredible in the first place.

Kejimkujik National Park

Kejimkujik NP and Lake – it’s all about the paddling…

Kejimkujik was established as a National Park in 1969, preserving old growth forest, a landscape for rare wildlife and waterways traveled by the Mi’kmaw people for thousands of years. In 1995, it was also designated as a National Historic Site celebrating the Mi’kmaw culture. The canoe routes were used to travel between the Bay of Fundy and the Atlantic Coast (with portages). Traces left behind by the original indigenous people included stone carvings (petroglyphs) on outcroppings along the rivers. These portray the typical Mi’kmaw life including hunting, fishing and wildlife. Being semi-nomadic, the Mi’kmaw spent winters inland, away from the colder coast while stocking up on fish and other food from the sea during the summer.

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!