We had a plan for today, and we pretty much completed it with little variation. The main event was Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado. We left the hotel at 8 AM and 50 degrees (which got as high as 88 before the day was over) and under mostly cloudy skies, and set out toward the east. The drive took us through rolling hills of green pastures with grazing cows and horses (still trying to figure out why they never intermingle the two) and over roads cut ...

I've said this before, I have learned from experience on these road trips that, just when you think you have nothing to do, when you have nothing planned, that’s when life plans your day for you. And that is what happened to us today. We left our hotel at 7:20 and 61 degrees (which quickly descended to 48 degrees and later hit 90), under mostly cloudy skies. All we had planned was a drive to Gunnison, CO and to enjoy the scenery, which is always s...

Today is my son's 44th birthday. Happy Birthday, Scott.Today was the day we were not really looking forward to because we crossed Nevada from one side to the other, and anyone who has done this knows it is difficult to get inspired to take photos. The landscape is monochromatic and does not provide a lot of food for the camera. But I did take some photos to document our trek. We left Reno at 6:45 and 61 degrees with clear skies. The temps fluctuated all d...

Today began at 8 AM and 70 degrees under clear blue skies. And it was a perfect day for what we had planned. We left Mariposa and headed for Yosemite National Park. We were here three years ago and only got to the south side of the park. So we decided to drive west to east, thru the park and out the other side, crossing the Sierra Mountains and seeing areas of the park we had not seen. We drove through Sierra National Forest, along the Merced River, deep in a...

This was a very long day. We began at 8 AM and 73 degrees with mostly sunny skies. The temps did get down to 66 in the park, but it was always very comfortable in shirt sleeves. We left Redding and headed west to Lassen Volcanic National Park. The plan was to drive in the west gate and out the south and that is what we did. We spent more time in the park than we had anticipated, which made the drive to Mariposa a long one. But we were enjoying the beauty of t...