Summer roadtrip

After a long while of mostly staying at home, Weena and I took a road trip around the country. We left California on June 11, and for 40 days (and 40 nights), we roamed from place to place catching up with friends, visiting national parks, racing cars, exploring caves, etc. In total, we drove 7,200 miles. We started out at the Grand Canyon. We stayed on the rim but got info in hiking in the canyon for a future visit.


A lesser known park that turned out to be interesting was Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. Petrified trees are everywhere, along with wildlife and indian ruins. We went here as a break from driving and ended spending a few hours more than expected.

Our next stop was at the Rocky Mountain Biological lab where we visit a friend that studies Marmots. We spent a day trapping and sightseeing, and the scenery is truly beautiful.

Next, on the way to the evolution meetings in Minneapolis, we made a stop at Mt. Rushmore and the black hills. This was the only part of the trip where we almost got bad weather. It got very windy at the campsite, and from the radio, we learned of big thunderstorms and tornado watches to our south, west and east. It seems we picked the right spot because we didn't even get rain at our campsite. The next night, we didn't take chances and went to a hotel.

Not far from Mt. Rushmore is Badlands National Park. Like the petrified forest, this place turned out to be better than expected - lots of wildlife and beautiful scenery.

Skipping ahead, we visited the Door Peninsula in Wisconsin. It's a nice place. One of the highlights as a visit to a restaurant where a train delivers food to your table.

We spent 5 days in Chicagoland mostly exploring the museums and downtown. We were there during the Taste of Chicago, so the crowds were larger than usual. This is the fountain in Grand Park.

This is on the Chicago river.

Weena is not exactly a dog person, but many of my friends are, but I think by the time we got to Michigan she was even beginning to like dogs. This at the beach on Lake Michigan with our friends Laurie and Joe.

We also went car racing in Michigan and Indiana. It was Weena's first time autocrossing, and she did pretty well. In addition to driving, it's fun to look at the cars people bring to the race. Most are regular cars, but one in a while there is something unusual, like this.

This is a video of an actual run at the race.




We made stops at several caves in South Dakota, Indiana and Kentucky. The most interesting was Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. We spent 7 hours exploring over 2 days, and we only saw a tiny portion. It is the longest cave in the world. Here's an attempt at cave photography.

The Green River runs along Mammoth Cave, and we spent a morning canoeing through the hills surrounding by lots of turtles and fish.

On the return trip, we stopped in Aztec, New Mexico. The "aztec" ruins are actually native american. We got to learn a little about native american history,

And we also got to explore the surrounding area. We found this arch less than 10 miles out of town. Continuing west, we drove through Monument Valley,

and stopped at Navajo National Monument for a rest and to visit some ruins.

On the last day, we drove through Zion National Park and had to stop for some pictures with the sandstone formations. We wished we had had more time to spend there...


So, those are our latest adventures. I'll post again when there are interesting news, but for now we're at home and life is back to normal.