National Parks, Monuments, Recreation Areas, Seashores, etc. in US and Canada
Coming from Hot Springs, we decided to enter the Badlands National Park via the southeast entrance, seeing hints and badland teasers as we approached. Nothing could have prepared us for the view as we crested the hill and dropped into the area known as Cedar Pass. And, we were staying at the Cedar Pass Campground. Cue the squeals!
I visited the Black Hills in 1983 and put it on the top of my list of places to visit again. It only took 33 years! I’m finally back, and Doug is getting to see this beautiful place for the first time. Some of the tourist towns have grown, attractions have received face lifts, and more vacationers have discovered the Black Hills, yet it remains every bit as beautiful as I remembered…
Tough morning…
And, yes, we do realize how fortunate we are to have these days.
Continue reading “ND Badlands – Theodore Roosevelt National Park”
Joe introduced me to Mike in 2007. Mike’s company Axia Strategies, a small healthcare consulting firm based in Savage, MN, needed to add a clinician to one of their client teams. That started a nearly 10-year relationship between our respective consulting firms. Mike and I shared a similar client service philosophy and a passion for craft brews, and he shared with me his love for the midwest. Mike’s work travel, a new grand-baby, getting 4 kids off to college, and managing a high-schooler’s sports schedule made arranging a get-together kind of tricky, but we were fortunately able to meet with Mike in Minneapolis for a great lunch. It was so fun to catch up, live, on his turf!
This schedule also gave us a couple of days to explore more of MN. We opted to stay along the St. Croix River where we enjoyed a gorgeous bike ride along the rolling hills near the WI border. We visited Pipestone National Monument, the sacred Indian mines. And since we were headed toward SD, Mike provided local intel on back roads to see MN prairies. And of course, corn…
Thanks Mike!
More photos of So Minnesota and Pipestone National Monument…
Our modus operandi has been to make up this adventure as we go along, so we haven’t planned much. Occasionally, we make reservations if we’d like to visit a popular area on a weekend. So far, it’s worked out, and what we thought could be our first shut-out turned into another high point…
My cousin Jean was 18 years old the day I was born, and she joined the army 8 months later. Two years after that, she married her sweetheart and moved to Wisconsin. Needless to say, I never knew my cousin. We met for the first time at her mom’s memorial service about 10 years ago. We decided we needed to connect and planned to do so at some time in the future which finally happened this week…
Continue reading “On Wisconsin: Pelican Lake and the Apostle Islands”
A quick scan of the pantry revealed that we were getting low on grains. As Vermont-hippy-vegetarians, grains are of course a mainstay of our diet and we needed to find a natural food store to replenish. I googled it and found two natural food stores in the UP, the nearest an organic grocery in downtown Sault (pronounced Soo) Ste Marie, the other a coop in Marquette, a few days west. We’d gone back and forth on whether or not to visit The Soo, another post-industrial-turned-tourist city, but nevertheless we needed food and we set a course…
There is a beauty in Acadia National Park that is special and naturally lifts the spirit. Mountains rise dramatically from the sea and host a number of ponds and lakes, rivers, trails, rock formations, and a wide variety of gorgeous, natural landscape arrangements all over the island. We were fortunate to spend four delightful days in the Park in advance of the full tourist season.
