The Alabama Hills is BLM land just outside of the town of Lone Pine, CA, that is a huge area of unusual rock formations, and which has a fantastic view of the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, including Mt. Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower 48.

We were so glad we timed our visit just right to see the autumn color! It was a great day at Kings Canyon!

Autumn was an excellent time to visit because we didn’t have to deal with massive crowds or traffic and parking headaches. The air temperature started off chilly in the mornings, but warmed up later to be quite comfortable. There was not a lot of fall color, but what was present was pretty. The only downside to visiting in the fall was that most waterfalls are dried up by this time of year.

We parked the RV in a campground along Hwy 101 southeast of Monterey, and took a day trip in the car along the northern section of the Big Sur coastline, from Monterey to Pfeiffer Beach on Hwy 1.

Ideally, we needed more than one day to explore San Francisco. However, we were staying over an hour away, (more like an hour an a half when factoring in traffic slowdowns), and we just didn’t want to deal with the crazy highway traffic that wore us out. So, we crammed in the highlights that we really wanted to see into one day.

While we were staying in Brookings, OR, we drove for half an hour down Hwy 101 to Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, which is within the Redwoods National Park boundary, and is jointly managed by the NPS and the California State Parks.

On the drive from Tillamook to Florence, we stopped at a viewpoint right off Hwy 101 called Boiler Bay, just north of the town of Depoe Bay. We enjoyed watching the surf crashing against the rocks.

Olympic is a huge, diverse, beautiful park. We saw several beaches, the mountains, and the rain forest. We hiked some trails to waterfalls, too.

This was the first photo I took that really got me (Julie) interested in photography. But more importantly, I have had this photo displayed in a frame ever since to preserve a memory.

There was so much to do and see on Whidbey Island, which is in Puget Sound, northwest of Seattle. We were there for a week, and didn’t run out of things to do. There were several state parks, lots of beaches, and cute little seaside towns.

Washington state is a treasure trove of beautiful places to see and things to do. We love the Pacific Northwest!

After leaving Glacier National Park, we traveled several hours to far-western Montana, and spent a few nights in Troy. It is beautiful country, here.

Full disclosure here: the not-so-good isn’t really BAD; it’s just stuff we’ve had to adjust to and deal with. And the surprise non-issue: the small square footage we live in!

We planned our first visit to Glacier to be the second week in July because the Going-to-the-Sun road would be clear of snow by then, and many of the park’s sights and trails are along that road.

Grand Teton N.P. is such a beautiful park that we wanted to see it again.

It’s a good thing this wasn’t our first trip to Yellowstone, because this big park needs much more time than one day in order to be seen properly.

Until this trip, the only time we’d spent in Idaho was on I-84 on our way to Oregon. Not very exciting. But we found out there is so much more to this big state!

We wondered why the national park in Nevada is called Great Basin, and we learned. . .

We revisited one of our favorite Utah parks: Capitol Reef. We booked a 4-hour tour of remote Cathedral Valley…

We revisited some of our favorite parks in Utah: Arches, and Cedar Breaks, and saw the new-to-us parks: Hovenweep Nat’l Monument, Natural Bridges, and the Needles District of Canyonlands. We also visited Corona Arch, on BLM land outside of Moab.