A cave is a cave, right? I guess at some point I picked up that mindset after visiting several natural cave areas over the year. There was Wind Cave in 2014, Carlsbad Caverns with Elizabeth in 2018, Meramec Caverns with my family in 2021. And maybe these visits were spaced enough apart that I didn’t …
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Desert Vacation 2026: Magical Views and Major Terrors in McKittrick Canyon
Elizabeth and I first visited Guadalupe Mountains National Park on July 14, 2018. We were just kids then – dumb 20-year-olds who stayed close to 2 hours away so we could save a few bucks and didn’t show up to the trailhead until we were guaranteed to fight the worst heat of the day and …
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Desert Vacation 2026: Deuces From Las Cruces
March 23, 2026 Elizabeth refused to wake up. I mean, that’s a normal day for me. But waking her up while we were sharing a hotel room with my parents was a new experience, I won’t lie. Admittedly, our prior day in Ruidoso and Cloudcroft had been a real barn-burner. Anyone would need a little …
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Desert Vacation 2026: Sunny Skies in the Sacramentos
Editor’s note: This is the 3rd post in this blog series but covers our 4th day. Yesterday we were at White Sands National Park, and I want to give a bit of a longer feature blog post to a new national park visited for both Elizabeth and myself. Plus we got back late. I woke …
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Desert Vacation 2026: Palo Duro on a Hot Day
First of all: thank god I managed to actually sleep last night. The Holiday Inn Express was delightfully cold, but coming off of a midshift it can be real hit or miss. Thrashing around in my bed at 11:30 pm, I feared the worst. But I awoke to the sound of my parents and the …
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Desert Vacation 2026: Amarillo By Evening
Thursday, March 19 Hello, everyone. It’s been a heck of a long time since I traveled anywhere (like, 7 whole weeks!). As of today, that long drought is over. My parents have been visiting in Oklahoma since this past Saturday. While it was a little bit of a squeeze having them in the house during …
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A Day in Olympic National Park
Until very recently in my life, the West Coast was a complete unknown. Somewhere out beyond the Rocky Mountains, a foggy land of $4 per gallon gas, surfer bros, and hippies remained outside of my sphere of consciousness. I never saw the Pacific Ocean until 2021 when I was a full 23-year-old adult. Since then, …
Mammoth Cave National Park: Domes and Dripstones Tour
Daylight filtered through the cheap curtains of our cabin. On Sunday, November 16, 2025, I can’t tell you how many people were waking up within the boundaries of Mammoth Cave National Park. Maybe some lodge employees? A few people staying there? A couple of hardy souls RV/tent camping down the road? But I can tell …
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Glacier 2025 Diary: September 20, Makoshika State Park
Editor’s Note: This post is a transcription of a diary that I kept from my trip to Glacier National Park with family in September of 2025. It has been lightly edited for grammar and syntax, and photos have been added. 9:15 am Currently writing from I-94 in far western North Dakota. We’re 27 miles from …
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Mammoth Cave National Park: The Historic Tour
I’ve often thought that National Park Service Rangers have some of the toughest public-facing jobs out there. To put it simply, the average American is an idiot. The average American in the great outdoors is an even bigger idiot. I often think of the off-duty rangers in Yellowstone who just wanted to go wolf-watching, only …
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