We Brake for Brown Signs: Hitting 100 in West Virginia

Our stop in West Virginia included a fun milestone: we visited our 100th National Park Service unit! NPS units include more than just parks — they include historic sites, monuments, battlefields, and more — but in this case our 100th was also America’s newest national park: the New River Gorge. But first, let’s review how … Read more

Lakefront Adventures at Sleeping Bear Dunes

One of the best decisions we made in planning our 2022 summer travels was booking a full week at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore on the northwestern shore of Michigan’s lower peninsula. Our campsite was fabulous and the park offers more than enough activities to keep us entertained. Normally I mention our campsite at the … Read more

Mining and Lake-Looking in Remote Copper Harbor

Before the California Gold Rush, there was the Lake Superior Copper Rush. Elemental copper was so bountiful in places along the southern shores of Lake Superior, especially the Keweenaw Peninsula, that it was widely harvested by the native inhabitants and became part of the trade networks in pre-Columbian North America. Even in prehistoric times, Lake … Read more

Apostle Islands and Wisconsin’s North Shore

Our eastward trek across the southern shore of Lake Superior will involve several relatively short stops, and the first of these was in Bayfield, WI to visit the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. The Apostles are a group of 22 islands clustered around the tip of the Bayfield peninsula in northern Wisconsin, and they have been … Read more

Dismal and Delightful Duluth

We arrived in Duluth on a cloudy Friday after a long (350 mile) relocation from Green Bay. Our introduction to the twin ports of Superior, Wisconsin and Duluth, Minnesota involved rolling through poorly maintained streets lined with tired 19th century brick buildings, past mountains of ore and graffiti-covered rail cars, alongside towering industrial port facilities, … Read more