Summaries Summer 2025 Northwestern RV trip highlights Summer 2025 Northwestern USA RV trip stats National Park Services properties National Parks Cuyahoga Valley National Park- day 1 Cuyahoga Valley National Park – day 2 Indiana Dunes National Park Voyageurs National Park Theodore Roosevelt National Park – Painted Hills Theodore Roosevelt National Park – South Unit Glacier… Continue reading Summer 2025 Northwestern USA RV trip – jump sheet
Summer 2025 Northwestern RV trip highlights
As promised, here are our trip highlights (both best and worst). For more info, you can click the underlined links to jump directly to the related posts Most enjoyed National Park: Yellowstone. There was so much to do and see there: geysers, mineral terraces, hot springs, fumaroles and bubbling mud pots… (8/29-9/1) Most enjoyed hiking… Continue reading Summer 2025 Northwestern RV trip highlights
Summer 2025 Northwestern USA RV trip stats
Here are a bunch of statistics related to our trip. I will do yet one more post soon to address trip highights. Time away. We were literally away the whole summer, as we left on June 22 (day 1 of summer) and returned on October 10th (fall season) for a total of 108 days. One… Continue reading Summer 2025 Northwestern USA RV trip stats
National Park Services properties
We got lucky, our last National Park Service (NPS) property visited was Effigy Mounds National Monument, two days before the start of the federal government shutdown which has resulted in the closing of public access to all NPS properties. Overall, we visited 14 National Parks, 16 National Monuments, 2 National Historical Sites (I will not… Continue reading National Park Services properties
The world’s largest truck stop – Iowa 80
This was our last scheduled place to visit during this trip, and one of those just-for-fun of the “world’s biggest” category. It is indeed an impressive site. The inside of the main building looks a bit like a trucker version of the growing chain of Buc’ees gas stations Except that it has more than one… Continue reading The world’s largest truck stop – Iowa 80
Rant about Iowa, corn and the ethanol paradox
Driving in Iowa, one is definitely surrounded by corn fields. This website talks about Iowa and corn and states about ethanol: “A renewable fuel that’s better for our environment, our health, our wallets and grown right in our backyard? That’s corn-based ethanol, and lowa produces more of it than any other state.” Is that so? … Continue reading Rant about Iowa, corn and the ethanol paradox
Effigy Mounds National Monument
This is our 16th and final National Monument that we visit during this trip. While its interesting, saying that there’s not much to see is not an understatement. Mounds are simply piles of dirt that were manmade. This is passed on not only by the native oral history, but was also confirmed via LIDAR that… Continue reading Effigy Mounds National Monument
Pike’s Peak State Park and Bridal Veil falls
Adding this one to our blog. It was only planned as a campground stop, but it borders the Mississippi river and has several viewpoints onto the river, and overlooking into Wisconsin. We also hiked a nice trail to the somewhat underwhelming Bridal Veil Falls (Underwhelming in the sense that they are puny falls compared to… Continue reading Pike’s Peak State Park and Bridal Veil falls
Important trip milestone
Objective #1 for this RV trip was to complete our map of the contiguous 48 states in the USA. As of today, mission accomplished. I talked about this before, but as a reminder we have two rules to affix a state sticker to our map: 1- We need to have slept at least one night… Continue reading Important trip milestone
Prince the musician – Paisly Park
Today, we had a musicall interlude, we visited the residence, business location, recording studio and now museum of the artist known as Prince. We did the short 90 minute tour, but there are two additional levels, with the top one being a 3-hour tour. This one was just fine for us. We saw actual memorabilia… Continue reading Prince the musician – Paisly Park