Tag Archives: Travel

The End of the Road… Trip

The Great Road Trip of 2023 is complete! Kenn and I were on the road for 30 days and 5,857 miles.

  • States Visited:
  • Alabama
  • Mississippi
  • Louisiana
  • Oklahoma
  • Texas
  • Colorado
  • Utah
  • Arizona
  • New Mexico
Ruby and Serenity
  • Places visited:
  • Cadillac Ranch
  • Capulin Volcano National Monument
  • Great Sand Dunes National Park
  • Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel
  • Dinosaur National Monument
  • Red Fleet State Park Dinosaur Tracks Trail
  • Canyonlands National Park
  • Arches National Park
  • Capitol Reef National Park
  • Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument
  • Scenic Byway 12 (Utah)
  • Bryce Canyon National Park
  • Zion National Park
  • Winslow, Arizona

As usual, I took my laptop with me and used it maybe once. I’ll be posting details over the coming weeks. Oh, and happy Fall y’all! Fall is my favorite season because it marks the beginning of the end of the miserable Southern summer heat and humidity. What’s your favorite season?

Road Trip 2023

Kenn and I decided that, once we retired, we would take a road trip every year in order to see and do the things we’ve never had the time to do before. We did take a trip in 2019, but it was limited in scope due to the fact that I was retired but Kenn was not. Of course, 2020 was a bust since everything was shut down but we did manage another trip in 2021. We didn’t take a trip in 2022, but that’s okay – we were traveling back and forth to South Carolina to visit our kids and help out with the twins. Visiting family is always a win for me! Our 2019 trip was 17 days long and our 2021 trip was 28 days long. If all goes as planned on this year’s trip, we’ll be on the road somewhere between 4 and 5 weeks.😬 Can I go that long without cats in my life? I guess we’ll find out.

Image courtesy of depositphotos.com

The ultimate goal for this year’s trip is to visit all of the national parks in Utah. We’ve been on the road for 11 days now and won’t get to the first park until next Sunday. However, we have visited one national park in Colorado and two national monuments: one in New Mexico and one in Utah. I’ll make detailed posts on them later.

I had big plans for having several posts written and scheduled during the time that we would be gone, but I got lazy and that didn’t happen. I’ll be posting as I can throughout the trip. I’ve got tons of photos for Wordless Wednesday so be prepared to be inundated with photos of one of my favorite things – rocks. That’s right, rocks. I probably should have been a geologist, LOL.

Time to run. I’ve got another busy day of hiking and photographing rocks ahead of me tomorrow!

Do you like to travel or are you more of a homebody?

Congaree National Park

Did y’all know there’s a national park in South Carolina? I didn’t until I read about it on The Adventures of Grammi and Grampa. Since we spend a lot of time in South Carolina, we added Congaree to our list of places to visit and finally got to do so in March 2023.

According to the park website, Congaree is “the largest intact expanse of old growth bottomland hardwood forest remaining in the southeastern United States.” Knowing that Congaree is one of the least visited national parks, I was surprised to find a full parking lot the day of our visit. (This CNN report lists Congaree as number 12 out of the 15 least visited national parks in 2022.)

Congaree has a number of trails available, but since our visit occurred during a period of frequent torrential rainstorms in the southeast, we decided to stick to the elevated boardwalk. Since some portions of the boardwalk were underwater, I’m sure the other trails were probably unpassable.

Congaree boardwalk

While I love a good swamp (the Okefenokee is my favorite so far), I can understand why Congaree is one of the least visited parks – swamps aren’t for everyone. The following photo is one of my favorites because it’s hard to tell where the trees end and the reflections begin. (Can you find the squirrel in the photo?)

One of the things I didn’t expect was the caterpillars. They. Were. Everywhere. Caterpillars on the railing of the boardwalk. Caterpillars hanging from trees on silken threads. Are those raindrops pattering on the surface of the water? No, it’s caterpillars. The end of the boardwalk was a platform overlooking a lake; very few people spent any length of time there because the caterpillars were raining down from the trees like little multi-legged paratroopers. (We also got to meet Ares, Dog of War and his family at the overlook.) According to one of the park volunteers, the number of caterpillars varies from year to year, but based on the numbers present during our visit, 2023 was gearing up to be a banner year for them.

We haven’t been able to travel much this year due to all of the expensive home repairs we’ve been dealing with. However, mentally revisiting Congaree for this post has me excited about our upcoming roadtrip. I’m ready for new adventures!

So, where do you stand on the subject of caterpillars? Yea or Nay?