My collection of occasional thoughts from the road… 1) Was at the laundry mat this morning and feeding money into the change machine when I glanced to my right and noticed a baby staring at me. Gave her a quick wave, and got a smile in return. My friends, a baby’s smile is worth it’s…

| El Paso, Texas | Big Bend National Park is a big place and my three days there were filled with big scenery, big adventure and big wonder. So much so that I’ve decided to break up my journal notes into two parts, to hopefully better capture the essence of my three days there. Big…

| Terlingua, Texas | Got back to my room tonight, pried my boots off and in a flash of sudden reflection thought to myself, ‘That’s exactly how a pair of hiking boots should look’. And then I started thinking about some of the places those boots and I have been in the last several months….

| Outside of Del Rio, Texas | The drive from Del Rio to Sanderson looked to be a couple of hours and figured to be quiet and uneventful ride West on US-90. A little bit down the highway, I pulled up to a Border Patrol checkpoint, a not at all uncommon occurrence in this part…

| Sanderson, Texas | This part of Southwest Texas is very dry, very hot, and is very sparsely populated. And so the highways leading me from Del Rio, TX towards Big Bend National Park were somewhat lonely, and the sites to see were few. Lots of scrubland, a few dried up canyons, and three specks…

| Hattiesburg, MS | After a pretty solid 8+ miles up to Charles Bunion the day before, I figured I’d take it a little easier today and sought out something with a more moderate amount of effort required. The hike in the Smokies certainly wasn’t the hardest one I’ve done, but it was my first…

| Taos, NM | ‘ The mountains are calling and I must go’. – John Muir This trip has turned out to be more than I even thought it could have been at the outset. It’s the first time I have spent any substantive time in the ‘West’ and it’s been an ethereal experience. The…

| Albuquerque, NM | Colorado just got blasted with a ‘winter’ storm that dumped two to three feet of snow in the mountain ranges that I had planned on hiking. As if an absurd amount of snow close to June weren’t enough they’re also dealing with downed trees, power lines and rockslides. So sadly, very…

| Durango, CO | Canyonlands is an enormous National Park. Encompassing over 337,000 acres, it’s the largest of Utah’s five national parks. Southwest of my stay in Moab, it’s far less popular than it’s sister National Park, Arches and actually draws the least annual visitors among it’s peers. The drive to the Visitor’s Center, like…

| Moab, UT | Eventually you reach the point in which you’ve run out of adjectives that can possibly do any sort of justice to the sights laid out before your eyes by Mother Nature. Well my friends, I reached that point this afternoon at the Needles Overlook. —– In doing some research on the…