When we found out the itinerary for the family cruise, Scott and I were super excited to see that the ship would be stopping at St Thomas… this meant that we could take an excursion to St John and visit US Virgin Island National Park!!!
That’s right, another vacation with a sign pic for the circus crew!!
National parks rarely disappoint and St. John was no exception. St John was our family’s favorite day of the vacation (and there were a lot of good days)!
We left Gana’s house around 11 on Saturday. Our destination was Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada. Our route was ‘the loneliest highway in America’. It was by far our longest drive of the trip, 8 hours with no midpoint destinations. But, of course, we made a few stops. We were not expecting much. We had mentally interpreted “loneliest highway” as “boringest highway” and thought it was going to be 8 hours of unchanging desert.
During our trek across California, we wanted to also make time to see some of Scott’s family that live here. Scott’s aunt, uncle, and his cousin and her family live a few hours from Pinnacles National Park and graciously offered to meet us there and spend time with us at the park.
We met at a restaurant called Togo’s… we had never heard of it before, but Scott’s cousin described it as “like subway only better.
Scott had been hoping for us to take a hike down from Glacier Point to Yosemite Valley. It would be our longest hike, but it would have been all down hill and we would pass both Nevada and Vernal Falls. Given our kids fascination with water falls, this seemed like a fun hike. Unfortunately, we learned too late that there was no shuttle from Yosemite Valley to Glacier Point, and the only way we could do this plan was if we had pre purchased tickets for a special shuttle that left early in the morning.
Scott and I visited Yosemite 14 years ago during our trip which shaped all trips. Therefore, it wasn’t a must see for this vacation. And when Scott and I were first plotting out this trip, we kind of waivered as to whether we wanted to include it or not. But, we decided that since Yosemite is one of the quintessential parks and since we were were were going to be SO CLOSE, we owed it to the kids to show them Yosemite.
This trip seems to be all about extremes and remoteness. Channel Islands National Park is a group of islands located off the coast of Los Angeles. A visit here gives one a glimpse of what the California coast looked like before it was overpopulated with humanity. You can find vegetation and wild life here that doesn’t exist anywhere else. The signature element of the park however is the rocky cliffs along the waters edge and the marine life.
It was super fun to take the kids to see the “Statue of the Liberty” on the first day of our vacation.
It was a cloudy and overcast day so the picture of the Manhattan skyline don’t pop with color, but it was still really neat to see the skyline from this vantage point.
At first we couldn’t figure out why our youngest would lay down on the ground when we were at the base of the pedestal.
Well, I am really sad to say our trip is winding down. We visited the last National Park of our vacation and we can count the number of days left on our trip on one hand. The last park on this grand vacation was Badlands National Park in South Dakota.
We hit the Badlands on a great day and a great time of day. The sun was low in the sky making the colors pop out.
Saturday we left Mt Rushmore and drove 4.5 hours north to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora, ND. A visit to this park meant an approximately 9 hour driving detour from what could have otherwise been a short hop from Mt. Rushmore to the SD Badlands. Sometimes a quest such as our forces your hand to take some pretty circuitous routes… we set off not exactly sure what the ND badlands had to offer that the SD badlands did not.
11 years ago when Scott and I did our first National Park/Cross Country trip, we drove through Wind Caves National Park. We hadn’t yet begun our quest to see every National Park, so we actually just drove through the park and enjoyed the prairie dogs and buffalo. It was literally a stop on our way, not a destination in itself. This time, Scott and I wanted to see the park the right way and go on a cave tour.