Travel musings

[cassidyrose]

Tonight Peter and I were talking about travel. I really want to travel as much as we can financially and logistically. He asked me where I wanted to go and off the top of my head I came up with the following.

Domestic travel focused on National Parks: Denali NP (Alaska), Glacier NP(Montana), Joshua Tree NP (CA), Yellowstone NP (Wyoming), Canyonlands (Utah), Arches NP (Utah), Zion NP (Utah), and Hawai'i Volcanoes NP (Hawai'i).

Other domestic travel: DC (focus on Smithsonian), Madison Square Garden in NYC to see Phish (hopefully there will be an opportunity to do this in the next couple of years), St. Louis (been there before and would like to see more), New Orleans, and San Diego (again, been before, would like to go again).

International travel: Iceland tops this list, then Germany (larger trip we hope to plan with Michael sometime in the the next 5-8 years), France, Amsterdam, England, Ireland (part of my family is from Ireland), Montreal, New Zealand, the Azores (other part of my family is from the island of Pico), Italy, Spain, and Antarctica (big reach).

The domestic travel feels within reach as does some of the international travel. Not sure if we will get to do all of the international travel, but I like to think about it and hope that we can do some chunk of it. I know that a trip to Germany could reasonably include travel to a few of different places (say, Berlin to Amsterdam, to Paris, for example), and England and Ireland are often done together, etc., but it is all expensive, but I try not to let that stop me from thinking about it. I have never been outside the US and Canada and would like to at some point.

Of course there are places closer to home that we will certainly visit again such as Yosemite, Lassen, and other state and national parks in Northern CA.

Just musing about travel and dreams and such.

Probably should not have had a coffee drink at 5:30pm, but I was so tired I could barely stand.

Comments

[mac-arthur-park.livejournal.com]

Ya know, if/when you get to St. Louis, I could probably find a convenient way to be in town. ;)

[zahraa]

You and I have a lot of the same places on our lists, and I've already been to some of them. Let me make a recommendation: Denali's not all that amazing. The weather is usually terrible, and you end up stuck on a bus. Only about 20% of visitors actually see the mountain. Unless you've got the time to spend a week bicycling the road and back country camping, I would skip it. If you're determined to try to see the mountain, Denali State Park is considerably closer to Anchorage and a much nicer place, with a 20% possibility of seeing the mountain. There are kayak trips there that are a lot of fun even if you don't see the mountain. I would do that instead.

Other parts of Alaska are absolutely amazing. zyxwvut and I had a great boat tour in Kenai Fjords, where we saw lots of animals and birds you guys would love. Being in the presence of an orca, and in the presence of a glacier calving, those were almost religious experiences. Indescribable. [Edit: I just remembered you went to Kenai Fjords, because you said you had hiked up to the Harding Icefield. Don't remember whether or not you went out on the boat tour, though.] But we were even more excited about our glacier trek in Wrangell-St. Elias. Not sure if kids can do glacier trekking, but it's a really cool, infrequently visited, remote park, the largest in the US.

We had a great time at Glacier because we went just before the main road opened. Yellowstone was unbearably overcrowded, but there were not very many other visitors at Glacier because of the road still being closed. The timing of this could be very tricky, because the Park Service can't predict exactly how long it will take them to clear the snow, but they open the road to bicyclists a week before they open it to cars. We were amazingly lucky, because, on the last day we were there, the road was opened to cars as far as the Logan Pass, and we got to drive up to the pass. We didn't have bicycles with us, but we figured that, since the road was open to bicyclists beyond the pass, it would also be open to pedestrians, and we walked over the top of the pass and got to see the other side. Amazing scenery. If you could time it right, it would be an incredible experience to ride on that road with no cars. Steep hills, though! And if you do go to Glacier, be sure to bring your passport, and get a rental car that is allowed to go into Canada, because the Waterton Lakes side is absolutely amazing.

You need an SUV to really see Joshua Tree effectively. Someday, I am going to go back there and rent one.

Hawai'ian Volcanoes--this absolutely can't be beat. One of the most awesome places I have ever seen in my lifetime.

I have web pages on all of these places--they're all linked from my home travel page (mydomain/travel).

[cassidyrose.livejournal.com]

We spent seven days in Seward on our honeymoon. We hiked to Exit Glacier, did the Harding Icefield hike, and tok a nine hour boat tour on Resurrection Bay (40 foot boat, only 14 of us on the tour). I loved the boat tour. We saw porpoises, whales, and puffins. We also saw a glacier calving. I do want to go back to Seward as Kenai is gorgeous.

I remember you saying that about Denali. Good to know about the state park.

I would not take my children glacier trekking. :)

Was Yelllowstone worse than Yosemite Valley in the summer?

Glacier will probably happen for us in the next couple-few years.

[zahraa]

Yellowstone was probably about the same as Yosemite Valley in summer. Thankfully, we weren't camping. I've never seen anything more awful in a national park than Curry Village, even in September.