Road Trips, National Parks & Backroads

20 Years Later

20 Years Later – Day Six: The Long Road Home

August 7, 2026 No Comments

We started the last day just outside Mesa Verde with a long way to go. Kansas City was the goal, the whole southwest corner of Colorado and everything after it standing between us and there. Alex still had Iowa waiting once he dropped me off. One more day.

Ramblings from the Road July 27, 2026

Looking to the Sky

A reflection this week rather than a trip. Some thoughts from a front porch in Florida, about fifteen minutes from Kennedy Space Center. There is a video of…

20 Years Later July 24, 2026

20 Years Later – Day Five: Monument Valley, Four Corners, and Mesa Verde

Day four ended at the bottom of a dirt road we could not see, and with a gas station clerk telling us to go drive it again in…

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Toyota 4Runner overlanding setup named Finn in the Loess Hills Mills County Iowa

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August 9, 2026

20 Years Later: A 2006 Southwest Road Trip

Twenty years ago, in 2006, my brother Alex and I pointed his car east out of Arizona and took the long way home. One week, six states, and a little under fifteen hundred miles of national parks, monuments, and roadside stops. Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Arches, Canyonlands, Monument Valley, Mesa Verde, with plenty of good

August 2, 2026

Mesa Verde National Park – Colorado

The History of Mesa Verde National Park Mesa Verde sits in the southwestern corner of Colorado, in Montezuma County, up on a high tableland cut by deep canyons. Mesa Verde is Spanish for green table. At 52,485 acres it protects more than 5,000 known archaeological sites, including about 600 cliff dwellings, which makes it the

August 2, 2026

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park – Arizona and Utah

The History of Monument Valley Monument Valley sits on the Arizona and Utah border, on Navajo Nation land. It is the landscape most people have in mind when they think of the American Southwest, tall red sandstone buttes standing alone on an open desert floor, the largest of them rising about 1,000 feet. The rock