Onward to White Sands National Park in New Mexico – the world’s largest gypsum dune field. We spent a few hours hiking around and taking pictures. The fine gypsum feels nice and cool underfoot – it doesn’t heat up in the sun like sand.
I had hoped to also visit the Trinity test site but it’s open to visitors only two days each year (once in April and once in October) due to the site being part of the active White Sands Missile Range. We left the park an hour or two before sunset to find a nice dispersed campsite beyond the next little range of mountains:
Continuing on our return trip, next stop was Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas near the New Mexico border. We checked out the visitor center and went for a hike in the afternoon before continuing on to camp on some BLM land in New Mexico near Carlsbad Caverns National Park. The following day was of course to visit Carlsbad Caverns.
We bought tickets for the self-guided tour and spent several hours enjoying and following the extensive walking paths of the cave system. There are ranger-led tours to some more isolated portions of the cave but these are very limited and get booked up well in advance. After exploring the cave at our leisure and having lunch back in the van, we waited around to join the ranger-hosted twilight event to learn about the bats that use the cave for much of the year and to wait for their grand, swarming, evening exit from the cave. No photography allowed (or any devices or talking for that matter) but we did get to watch many hundreds stream out. Apparently at later times of the year, you can see many hundreds of thousands of bats exit the cave.
We camped on some more BLM land that evening but woke the next day to a severe high wind and dust storm forecast for hundreds of miles in every direction. We had already planned to restock food in the town of Carlsbad so we ended up just renting a hotel room to sit out the storm.
On our return trip from watching the eclipse in Central Texas, Darlene and I first headed to the southwest edge of Texas to spend a few days exploring Big Bend National Park along the Mexico border.
We didn’t have campground reservations and of course everything in the park was booked out for weeks but we were able to snag backcountry sites which you can only reserve in-person 24 hours in advance. These are a handful of very dispersed but specifically designated sites along some of the unpaved back roads. Know that some of these roads require high clearance 4×4 vehicles and some of the sites are very remote, requiring hours to reach. We actually chose not to take one of these sites because we didn’t want to have to spend so much time to get to it and from it. As it turned out though, we spent over an hour trying to get to a camp area outside the north end of the park. In hindsight, we should have looked to find a campground out the more built-up west entrance of the park.
Anyway, we spent three full days hiking, biking and touring very different areas of the park, from desert to mountains and along the Rio Grande. If you go, make sure you don’t skip out on the really well done Fossil Discovery Exhibit.
On our way to Texas to see the eclipse, we enjoyed an afternoon checking out the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona: lots of wide vistas and pretty landscapes, some pueblo ruins and petroglyphs, Triassic era fossils and of course lots of colorful “rockified” (okay, petrified) tree remains everywhere.
We reached the final destination of our road trip down SR95 on New Year’s Eve: Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. The area is full of scenic trails, grand vistas, gorgeous rock formations and lots of bouldering and rock climbing opportunities. As usual, we found places to camp along dirt roads on nearby BLM land.
Due to Red Rock Canyon’s popularity and close proximity to Las Vegas, you have to purchase a timed entry reservation online to access the scenic loop road and its associated trailheads but the system works well. One thing I’d recommend to make the most of your time is to spend a day exploring the Calico Hills area from the other side – from the free-to-access Calico Basin area – so that you can have more time for other trails on the day you reserve entry to the scenic loop.
Continuing south on SR95 from Tonopah and Goldfield, we came through Beatty and reached the Goldwell Open Air Museum a little before sunset:
We spent the next two nights in a spot in the hills outside Beatty and ventured out on our bikes to explore and visit the remains of the mining town, Rhyolite. We also encounter some wild burros both out in the desert and in the middle of the town of Beatty.
One year after the camper van was rear-ended and a very long time at a body ship plus several more months getting rebuilt and outfitted, Darlene and I (and Hera) were finally able to head out in the van again for some exploration. We ended up camping out in four different dispersed spots we found over not quite two weeks in an area of the Sierra Nevada between Carson and Ebbetts Passes (often near the Pacific Crest Trail), going exploring by mountain biking, hiking and geocaching.
We had nice weather the whole time except for some wildfire smoke that started to blow in on the last couple of days. We cut the trip a couple days short to avoid getting caught out in a bit of snow forecast for the higher elevations.
Darlene and I joined Glenn and Michele for a weeklong trip with BikeHike Adventures in Portugal and our wonderful local guide Pedro and driver Filipa. Our trip started with a day tour of Lisbon and continued with hiking days along various portions of the Portuguese coast as we worked our way south, including portions of the Vicentina Trail (or Rota Vicentina). We visited a tile workshop to see how Portugal’s azulejo tiles are created and got to try our hand at painting our own tiles. Our trip ended with a visit to our guide’s mountain home town and enjoying a home-cooked meal from his mom at his uncle’s distillery before the return all the way back to Lisbon.
Unfortunately, Darlene came into the trip with a lingering respiratory illness and we didn’t think she was still infectious until I started getting symptoms – sore throat, congestion and eventually frequent coughing fits. Darlene sat out one day’s hiking and we both took a day off to try to sleep and recover, the two of us missing out on the hike to Cabo San Vicente, the southwestern-most point in Europe. We all masked up once it became clear I was getting sick, but Glenn and Michele ended up getting infected by the end of the trip anyway. And we all had to deal with it for our ongoing travel – Darlene and I on to Spain and Glenn and Michele continuing on in northern Portugal, Spain and the Azores.
Darlene and I were able to extend our stay in Costa Rica following Nacho and Adriana’s “not-a-wedding” and we both got to enjoy some new areas of the country – this time during their very wet and rainy “green season”. (All of our arrangements were made through Costa Rica Rios.)
We started off with a few days in and around the very popular and very busy Manuel Antonio National Park to see the wildlife – three-toed sloths, white-face monkeys, caiman, basilisks, spiders and snakes (on my!) – and enjoy the beaches. We stayed at the Gaia Hotel and Nature Preserve.
After Manuel Antonio, we were transferred further south and a little bit inland on a rough road to the remote Rafiki Safari Lodge for four nights. From the lodge we managed to get wet in numerous ways: smashing waves on a raft on the Rio Savegre, walking through a heavy waterfall, careening down a water slide, wading into a roaring whirpool beneath another waterfall, soaking in the lodge’s hot tub and of course hiking in the rainforest – in the rain. We were also treated to our guide Kenneth’s extensive knowledge of the jungle and life growing up in the nearby very small and remote villages.
Our next adventure was a steep hike up to and an overnight stay in The Cave, behind the Diamante waterfall near Los Tumbas. We also explored some additional trails and came upon another even more insane waterfall as well as an unexpectedly long climb/hike to a not-so-nearby swimming hole. The next morning, Darlene opted to do the optional rappel down between the twin falls near the cave:
From there we were transported south to Osa Peninsula and had a boat transfer through the mangrove waterways out to Drake Bay and La Paloma Lodge. Over the following four days, we had a scuba dive trip out to Caño Island, a guided tour with Tico to see lots more wildlife in a bit of Corcovado National Park, a very entertaining and somewhat eventful kayak outing (ask Darlene) in a river channel as the tide came in and a long day’s hike along the coast and the edge of the rainforest to see some (ahem) non-existent baby sea turtles. (Again, ask Darlene. ;-)
A five-and-a-half-minute video montage of our whole trip.
Exploring southeastern Oregon, Darlene and I made our way up to Alvord Desert, below the eastern front of Steens Mountain. We zipped around the playa mid-day for a little while and then continued north along the steep eastern front of the mountain. As it turns out, all the roads up into the mountain from this side feature private property signs and require special permission to access, so we ended up continuing on to other southeastern Oregon destinations before eventually circling back several days later.
Kiger Mustangs
On our way back we passed through the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and headed to the highlands in hopes of seeing the Kiger Mustangs. These are wild horses which were only fairly recently discovered to be direct descendents of Iberian horses brought over by Spanish conquistadors some 400 years ago. We did come across a large herd near the road that we could watch for a long while before sunset, even while we cooked and ate dinner.
The next day we took up the Steens Mountain loop from the north, going clockwise and checking out Kiger Gorge before finding a pullout along the road to spend the night. (Too many mosquitos in the actual campground back down amongst the creek and aspens.) Over the next couple of days, we checked out many stupendous viewpoints and got in a few hikes (including off-trail from the peak). We camped at another pullout near the top one night so we could more easily catch sunrise and we ran into another herd of wild horses at lower elevations.
Steens Mountain montage
After Steens Mountain, we headed home west (choosing to skip a follow-up visit to Alvord Desert) and stayed overnight in Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge where we enjoyed a soak in a hot spring pool and did spot a herd of antelope.
On our southeastern Oregon tour, Darlene and I made our way over to the Owyhee Canyonlands near the Idaho border. It was July and it was hot, so hardly anyone else was around. We had to get up with the sunrise to get in hiking and exploration before the afternoon heat but it was gorgeous! The rock formations around Leslie Gulch are fantastic as well as the Succor Creek Natural Area. We would have enjoyed spending more days exploring but there was an incoming heat wave promising well over 100 degree weather for the coming days so we decided to skedaddle and find some cooler weather in the higher altitudes of the central Oregon mountains.
On our way through Nevada to southeastern Oregon, Darlene and I spent a couple of days exploring the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge and the Thousand Creek Gorge in particular. Only spotted a single lone antelope but got in a bit of biking and hiking and a soak in the hot spring pool at the Virgin Valley campground. Didn’t stay at the campground but found a spot in some nearby BLM land outside the wildlife refuge. We also overnighted at Bog Hot Springs off of highway 140.
Somewhere along the way, on some rough and rocky side roads in the refuge, we managed to bust off our gray tank’s drain valve. Didn’t even notice for a couple of days. Oops! Eventually we found enough parts to repair it about a week later.
Darlene and I spent a couple weeks in late June and early July at the Tahoe house taking care of a bunch of house maintenance, including roof repair, clearing newly fallen branches and pine needles, moving the bear box to accommodate a widening of the driveway, etc. We took some time off from all that to go climb to the top of a very windy Mt. Rose (elev. 10,785 ft.), do some mountain biking and hike up the Five Lakes trail near Palisades/Alpine Meadows.
We also had another bear visitor while up working on the roof:
Darlene and I loaded up the van and the cats and headed out this past week for a short adventure. First stop was to overnight under some dark skies in the San Benito mountains for a potential meteor storm from Tau Herculids. (There was a decent meteor shower, but no full-on storm.) We then spent the next five days in and around Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Park, hiking among the magnificent giant sequoia trees, checking out Kings Canyon and exploring the Sequoia National Forest between the two national parks. We also attempted an extended mountain bike ride from Buck Rock to Lookout Peak but had to abort due to a failure / total destruction of my rear hub – resulting in a long bike walk back.
We came across some black bears while hiking in Sequoia National Park.
After a week in Mt. Bachelor, and with Darlene still visiting her mom, my intention had been to explore southeastern Oregon, but a series of forecasted storms would make many of those dirt roads impassable so I headed back south and ended up on a trip through central Nevada with the ultimate goal of visiting Great Basin National Park near the Utah border. (Separate post and gallery here.)
This trip involved traveling lots of remote routes, both paved and unpaved, and finding interesting places to camp. Along the way, I spent some time trying out the mountain bike trails near Ely at Ward Mountain, visited the Lunar Crater National Landmark and explored the amazing clay formations at Cathedral Gorge State Park. No alien encounters (although I was buzzed by what might have been an F-22 Raptor) and unfortunately the ghost town / fossil site Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park is currently closed for road repairs.
Looking towards Doso Doyabi (center) and Wheeler Peak (right).
These are pictures from spending four days in Great Basin National Park in mid-April (with the cats, of course) – driving up to the Mather Overlook (the road was still closed beyond that point due to snow), hiking up the Baker Creek Trail and the Lehman Creek Trail, taking the Lehman Caves tour and venturing around to the remote southern tip of the park to hike up to Lexington Arch.
I want to go back sometime and do the hike to the top of Wheeler Peak (elevation 13,065 ft / 3982 m).
