The West – Page 2 – Oh, the Places We See . . .

Schedule extra time for Sylvan Lake — Custer State Park, SD

We usually plan fairly well when mapping out our day-to-day itineraries for a long trip. We know how much time to project for each stop so we can estimate where to spend the night, how long it will take to travel between sites, and what we’ll do when we get to where we’re going. But […]

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Life is short, take the curves: Needles Highway, SD

South Dakota’s Custer State Park may be on your list of best places to visit for a chance sighting of buffalo in the Wildlife Scenic Loop. But for sheer scenery you don’t want to miss Needles Highway. Needles is part of the Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway named for former SD Governor Peter Norbeck who mapped […]

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Rush hour: Custer State Park

“Sometimes the only way to ever find yourself is to get completely lost.” Kellie Elmore You’ve seen the pictures in brochures, but until you experience it, you may not understand the rush that comes from at afternoon herd movement in SouthDakota’s Custer State Park. Even though we’d seen pictures of massive buffalo roaming freely in […]

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A truly great thing: Mount Rushmore National Memorial

More and more we sensed that we were creating a truly great thing, and after a while all of us old hands became truly dedicated to it and determined to stick to it. Otto “Red” Anderson, driller and assistant carver With nearly three million visitors from all over the world coming to Mount Rushmore each […]

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It’s all good in Badlands National Park!

People told us we picked a great time to visit the Badlands. “You’ve come at a great time,” they’d say. But we didn’t get it. After all, we’d never been to the Badlands on any day before now. But after the short trip from Wall Drug Store down I-90, we began to see what the […]

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Kickin’ it in South Dakota: the journey begins!

Two events got me to thinking about what to write next: 1) National Travel & Tourism Week 2020 and 2) our coronavirus shelter-in-place mandates. If Bert and I go anywhere right now, it will be within the continental U. S. and probably near a national park. So, with that in mind, I’m sharing a trip […]

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Discover Prompt 22: Tempo

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty. John Ruskin On this day — April 22, 2020 — we celebrate 50 years of Earth Day. And the tempo with which we interact with Mother Earth speaks to our own sense of how we like to interface with the earth as we […]

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Discover Prompt 21: Instrument

You do have to be careful with your voice. It is an instrument. Elvis Costello This week, April 18-26, has been designated as a time to celebrate the 58 national parks in the United States through National Park Week and to remember that we can be instruments of change. As we pay tribute, even virtually, […]

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Layered

Perhaps anywhere you travel out West you’ll see layers of beauty, but Utah is our latest state to visit where seeing overlapping beauty truly became the norm. If you’ve ever crested a hill while driving a scenic highway, you know the ah-ha moment when you catch your breath and say, “Oh, my gosh!” or something […]

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Take that road less travelled: Potash Road, Utah

Just put a road we don’t know in front of us, and we’re likely to drive it — side roads, byways, you name it. But one thing we learned while driving in Utah is this: If it says Utah Scenic Byway, don’t miss it. To get there from Moab, drive about four miles along Hwy. […]