Exploring the American Landscape
Beaches and more
One of our bucket list items for our time in Arizona was a visit to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, located deep in the heart of the Sonoran Desert along the border with Mexico. We weren’t sure whether the government shutdown would impair our experience, but we decided to stick with our planned schedule and … Read more
We arrived in Arizona after our week at Joshua Tree with the federal government still shut down and still throwing a wrench into our plans. Fortunately we had built some flexibility into our schedule, so we decided to hunker down for a week near Quartzsite, Arizona to see how things developed in Washington. Quartzsite The … Read more
Our visit to Joshua Tree National Park coincided with both the park’s traditional busy season around the winter holidays and the ongoing government shutdown. While this made for more stress in our planning, including finding a new place to camp outside the park when all the campgrounds were closed, we were still able to enjoy … Read more
Our drive in from the Mojave area really set the stage for the world of extremes that we would experience in Death Valley National Park, the largest national park outside of Alaska. One of the few towns we passed through was Trona, which basically brought my vision of an industrial hellscape to life. The town … Read more
Well, the grinches in Washington have given us a stinker of a Christmas present. We were evicted from our scenic public campground in Death Valley National Park – on Christmas Eve, no less – when the National Park Service closed. Even though one party controls both houses of Congress and the presidency, that brain trust … Read more