The Journey of a French Couple Traveling the United States in a Minivan since 2017.
If you’re planning on visiting the Redwoods in California for the first time, don’t go the Redwoods National Park. The trees there have been replanted and are young, which is too bad because a lot of the beauty of the redwoods lies in their advanced age. Instead, drive to the State Parks: Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park, and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Continue reading “Two Easy Hikes To See the Redwoods In California”
We love hiking and this is what we do when we’re not working or chilling, but we usually only do long 10-15-mile day hikes. In Grand Teton National Park (Wyoming), we raised the bar and spent two days hiking with one night in the wilderness! One tiny night seems like nothing, but for us it was kind of a big deal —last time I had trekked over several days was in 2003 in Peru with a group and donkeys carrying my stuff (it’s cheating), and Henri had just never done anything like this. We were lucky to try this in some of America’s most beautiful mountains with the best mentors in the world. Continue reading “Backpacking For The First Time in Grand Teton National Park”
Yellowstone National Park is one of these places I had heard about when I was working for Lonely Planet in Paris, as I posted so many pictures of its famous colorful pool on social media. For a long time, I thought Yellowstone was only about that crazy-looking pool. And I naively thought it was one of these very remote, barely visited places in the US. Well, we actually made it here, and I must say all my assumptions about this park were completely wrong. There is so much to see and do in Yellowstone that it kept us busy for a full week and it’s the biggest, busiest US national park we’ve visited. Continue reading “We Survived Yellowstone National Park in July”
Badlands National Park (South Dakota) is like nowhere else on earth. Continue reading “What Happens When You Visit Badlands National Park”
We visited Mount Rushmore —more because of our passion for the movie North by Northwest, than for patriotic reasons. I couldn’t name the four of them before we went there, so I can say it was worth it. I thought that the sculpture of Washington, specifically, was a masterpiece.
Our visit of Rocky Mountain National Park (often abbreviated RMNP) marked the beginning of our new life waking up everyday before sunrise, and becoming experts in fighting the summer crowds in National Parks. Continue reading “Rocky Mountain National Park: Hiking America’s Most Beautiful Mountains”
Nebraska has been a great surprise in this adventure so far. Continue reading “Yes, Nebraska is Cool – 72 Hours in The Cornhusker State”
So we went all the way to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (UP, pronounced Yoopee) and traveled along the shores of Lake Superior on the US side. Continue reading ““UP” & Down: our beautiful struggle in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula”
We have one “people traveling in a van” problem that does not have a solution: rain. It has been raining SO MUCH since we started our road trip along Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. See, our van is actually a car which is a great house when it’s sunny, but miserable if it rains for more than a day. Stuff gets easily wet, it doesn’t ever get dry, we are stuck inside our super small van. Continue reading “Climbing a Giant Dune In The Rain – Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Michigan”
Last week, Henri and I took the Grand Avenue Tour at Mammoth Cave National Park, KY. Mammoth Cave National Park hosts the longest cave system in the world by far, with 400 miles of trails and passages. With such a huge underworld to discover, it is not a surprise that dozens of tours are proposed from very short & easy to very long & strenuous. Here is a review with pictures of the Grand Avenue Tour. Continue reading “Grand Avenue Tour at Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky”