Outdoors

Cataract Falls, Great Smoky Mountains NP, Tennessee

Having recently talked about our parents' weekend with one son in West Virginia, I feel compelled to give equal billing to the other, a student at University of Tennessee in Knoxville, TN. Our trip to Tennessee was similar in structure, but different in detail. First off, it takes a lot longer for us to get…Read more Cataract Falls, Great Smoky Mountains NP, Tennessee

Washington With Bones, Part 6B – Out of the Cascades

When we last left our heroes, they were at Diablo Lake in North Cascades National Park, marveling at the deep turquoise color in disbelief that it was actually real. By this time, lunch was calling, and so our next objective was to find a good place for that. We were stocked up for one last…Read more Washington With Bones, Part 6B – Out of the Cascades

Washington With Bones, Part 6A – North Cascades National Park

We woke up in a dense fog. The night had been fairly quiet, the South Fork of the Stillaguamish was just barely audible through the walls of the van as the temperatures dropped and the fog rolled in. As we made coffee in the cold damp, a gathering of crows (murder!) appeared on a nearby…Read more Washington With Bones, Part 6A – North Cascades National Park

Washington With Bones, Part 5 – North To The Cascades, via Seattle

The night was chilly. It was the only night we actually had a normal RV power station available, so we made use of the adapter we'd brought and had an electric space heater going all night. It turned out to be very welcome, as the temperature got down to between 40 and 45 deg F.…Read more Washington With Bones, Part 5 – North To The Cascades, via Seattle

Washington With Bones – Part 4B: Leaving Paradise

Having spent the morning hiking around and getting various views of Rainier, we had worked up an appetite, so we popped over the ridge, just downhill from Paradise, to the Paradise Picnic Area. This was very conveniently placed for us, though it put us among the trees and out of sight of the summit. Paradise…Read more Washington With Bones – Part 4B: Leaving Paradise

Washington With Bones – Part 4A: Mt. Rainier From Paradise

The morning of Day 4 (Tuesday) dawned cool and foggy. It had gotten down to about 45 deg the night before, enough to prompt an extra layer in Bones to stay warm. The fog had settled into the little creek valley and plunged our campsite into low visibility mist. We'd had no more visitation or…Read more Washington With Bones – Part 4A: Mt. Rainier From Paradise

Washington With Bones – Part 3: Hoh Rainforest

The Hoh Rainforest gets an average of 140 inches of rain every year. That's more than 3 times as much as stereotypically rainy Seattle, only 100 miles away, gets. The Olympic Range catches all the moisture coming in off the Pacific and dumps it onto the westward slopes, generating the famous temperate rainforests, of which…Read more Washington With Bones – Part 3: Hoh Rainforest

Washington With Bones – Part 2C: Sol Duc and Rialto Beach

It had already been a long day by the time we navigated the windy road down off Hurricane Ridge and traveled, once again, along the south shore of Lake Crescent. The lake is beautiful, but I was really starting to feel stuck in this one little area. We'd been back and forth along this stretch…Read more Washington With Bones – Part 2C: Sol Duc and Rialto Beach