Our youngest son Sam lives in Seattle now, so connecting with him on the last day of my northwest vacation was the best part of the whole week.
My base of operations was the Sorrento Hotel, a 115-year old institution just a few blocks down Madison Street from Sam’s apartment.
On my way from Seattle to Redwood National Park (previous post), I had to drive through Oregon and Washington. On the way back, I made a few stops.
Crater Lake National Park was my first stop, an impressive relic of an ancient volcano.
The tall trees called me back to California to start a week of vacation.
I woke on Central Daylight Time and ventured out for a look at Crescent City’s Battery Point lighthouse under the setting moon.
I realized when I woke up this morning that plans to work in the garden today were not going to be realized, due to the 5½ inches of rain we’d seen in our rain gauge the last 2 days. So I decided to to take a hike…to the arboretum.
Dew Droplets on the bright green grass.
Two to two and a half centuries ago, the main source of income in this region was the fur trade. The town where I grew up, Prairie du Chien, was one of the main hubs of this trade. Even today, the annual Rendezvous along the shore of the Mississippi River celebrates the traders and trappers who gathered there for decades to seek their fortune. All of those furs eventually made their way by canoe to Mackinac Island, and from there to the east coast and Europe. Probably since high school I’ve wanted to visit Mackinac and explore that fur trading connection. This became the year.
Friday morning I awoke in my tent along the western shore of Lake Michigan’s Green Bay, at Wells State Park (Michigan DNR).
Frank Lloyd Wright has been called the world’s most famous architect. There now exists, across southern Wisconsin, the Frank Lloyd Wright Trail, that connects some of his most famous and iconic creations. Not the least of which is his home, Taliesin, just across the Wisconsin River from Spring Green.
This was the third time I’ve stood in the drafting room at Hillside School. The first time was about 60 years ago when my dad and some of my brothers stopped in to talk with someone because one of my brothers was thinking of becoming an architect. Thirty years ago, when Taliesin started doing tours, my brother and I came on a Saturday morning for a tour. At that time we walked through the school, but not the house.
Yosemite was just one of the parks on my itinerary for this trip. Right next door are Sequoia and Kings Canyon parks, which feature great scenery and giant redwoods.
Two of the largest trees in the world are in these parks, by volume and by height. General Grant (left) is in Kings Canyon and General Sherman (right) is in Sequoia.
Yosemite is one of the crown jewels of the US National Park system.
If you approach Yosemite from the south you enter through a tunnel, the second longest tunnel in the national park system. And then there’s a parking lot where you can get your first view of the Yosemite Valley and Bridal Veil Falls.
I’ve never camped in a National Park. So this road trip offered the opportunity to do that. The third evening into the trip I arrived at Mesa Verde National Park, in the southwest corner of Colorado.
Mesa Verde has a lot of archaeology going on, which is great.
I got an invitation to a California wedding, and I love road trips. So June on the calendar became reserved for a western journey.
First Stop was an early morning visit to Pikes Peak State Park in Iowa, overlooking the confluence of the Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers. I grew up in the shadow of this park, with many visits over the years. Now it was time to seek the top of the other eminence memorializing 19th century explorer Zebulon Pike.
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