Pinnacles Overlook, Badlands National Park, August 2024 After briefly skirting the South Unit, I spent much of an afternoon checking out the various overlooks along the Sage Creek Rim Road and Badlands Loop Road in Badlands National Park’s North Unit. This is where the bulk of the most scintillating sedimentary formations are located. Heading from …
Steamboat Rock, Dinosaur National Monument, June 2022 Roughly straddling the border between Utah and Colorado, Echo Park Road extends 12 miles and connects the paved Harpers Corner Road with its namesake Echo Park—a hidden flat near the confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers in Dinosaur National Monument. Here travelers will find a campground and …
Artist's Drive is a popular, 9-mile one-way scenic road in the heart of California’s Death Valley National Park that weaves through craggy badlands and skirts colorful hillsides in the shadow of the Black Mountains. The drive bears east from Badwater Road, roughly 10 miles south of the Furnace Creek Visitor Center, in Death Valley. Climbing …
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- Civil War Series - Before becoming the 16th president, Abraham Lincoln spent most of his life in what was then considered the “Northwest Territory” of the United States: the relatively unpopulated states north of the Ohio River Valley. From his boyhood in Kentucky and Indiana to his rise to prominence as a lawyer and …
Before the New River Gorge Bridge—the longest arch bridge in the western hemisphere—was constructed in 1977, travelers across New River Gorge in southern West Virginia were forced to descend and ascend more than 800 feet in elevation on the slow and winding Fayette Station Road. The road also serviced a pair of small mining towns, …
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- Civil War Series - The 1862 Peninsula Campaign, intended by the Union to put a decisive end to the Civil War by capturing the Confederate capital of Richmond, began with a slow start. Gen. George McClellan, despite setting out in March 1862 with the largest army the continent had ever seen, inched up the …
- Civil War Series - At the start of the Civil War in 1861, both the Union and the Confederacy foresaw a quick conflict, expecting to be done fighting by summer’s end. Politicians in the North believed the Federal Army would conquer Richmond, the Confederate capital, in one fell swoop, while top Southern general P.G.T. …
California Route 89—also known as the Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway or Lassen Volcanic National Park Highway—spends nearly 30 miles weaving through Lassen Volcanic National Park. In addition to circling the park’s namesake (Lassen Peak, 10, 457’), this scenic drive connects low-lying lakes with high-altitude meadows and geothermal features and provides access to more than a …
- Revolutionary War Series - As the Battle of Yorktown raged to the east, George Washington and his French ally Comte de Rochambeau set up their encampments in the woody perimeter around Yorktown in 1781. After hitting the key sites on the Yorktown Battlefield Auto Tour, visitors to Virginia's Colonial National Historical Park today can also …
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- Revolutionary War Series - The Battle of Yorktown, the last major engagement of the American Revolution, was a decisive victory for Gen. George Washington’s Continental Army and the death knell for continued British occupation. Today, the site of the 1781 battle is protected by Colonial National Historical Park, near the banks of the York …
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