Bailly/Chellberg Trail (Indiana Dunes National Park, IN)

Bailly/Chellberg Trail, Indiana Dunes National Park, June 2022 A prominent French Canadian fur trader, Joseph Bailly settled in the Indiana Dunes area in the early 19th century, establishing a trading post in 1822 near present-day Porter, Indiana. Decades later, Swedish immigrants Anders and Johanna Kjellberg purchased 80 acres of land on the other side of …

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Jones Hole Trail & Ely Creek Falls (Dinosaur National Monument, UT)

Jones Hole Trail, Dinosaur National Monument, June 2022 Although most famous for its prehistoric fossils, Dinosaur National Monument in northeast Utah and northwest Colorado covers more than 200,000 acres of canyon country that rivals the “Mighty Five” national parks farther south. Here the Green and Yampa Rivers—and their various tributaries—have carved a labyrinth of snaking …

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Grimes Point Petroglyph Trail (Grimes Point Archaeological Area, NV)

Grimes Point Petroglyph Trail, Grimes Point Archaeological Area, September 2020 For travelers driving Nevada’s Highway 50—the “Loneliest Road in America”—Grimes Point is an excellent spot to get out and stretch your legs, taking advantage of a short trail to a fantastic set of ancient petroglyphs. Undoubtedly more vivid and more interesting than Hickison Petroglyphs, which …

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Hickison Petroglyphs Interpretive Trail (Hickison Petroglyphs Recreation Area)

Hickison Petroglyphs Interpretive Trail, Hickison Petroglyphs Recreation Area, September 2020 Highway 50, which stretches for more than 400 miles across central Nevada, is called the “Loneliest Road in America” for a reason. Services and cell service are in limited supply as travelers skirt the desolate mountain ranges and sagebrush-studded valleys of the Great Basin region. …

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Cesar E. Chavez National Monument, CA

Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in Keene, California is a small National Park Service site dedicated to the life and memory of the most famous leader of the California farm workers movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Nestled in a picturesque valley in the southern Sierra Nevada, the national monument features several exhibits on the …

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Point Bonita Lighthouse Trail (Golden Gate National Recreation Area, CA)

Throughout much of San Francisco’s history, ships seeking to enter the Bay Area flirted with disaster: jagged rocks, shallow beds, dense fog, and nasty waves left hundreds of vessels in the 19th and 20th centuries capsized, torn apart, and buried at the ocean floor. As thousands of gold prospectors—from all over the world—flocked to San …

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Abraham Lincoln Driving Tour

- 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 …

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Lincoln Boyhood Loop (Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, IN)

- Civil War Series - Well before he rose to prominence as an Illinois politician and 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln spent much of his boyhood on a modest farmstead at Little Pigeon Creek in southern Indiana. It was here that young Abe, from 1816 to 1830, came of age: he worked …

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Jumonville Glen Trail (Fort Necessity National Battlefield, PA)

What precisely happened on May 28, 1754 at Jumonville Glen in southwestern Pennsylvania remains unknown to this day. British forces led by a young Lieutenant Colonel George Washington claimed that, when they encountered a French contingent encamped at the base of a cliff, the French fired first. The French forces, commanded at the time by …

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Ball’s Bluff Battlefield Interpretive Trail (Ball’s Bluff Battlefield Regional Park, VA)

- Civil War Series - 1861 was a rough year on the battlefield for Union forces in the Eastern Theater. After the Civil War commenced at Fort Sumter in April, the young Federal Army suffered a significant setback at the First Battle of Bull Run in July. Although the Confederate Army failed to push the …

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