Channel Islands National Park

Channel Islands National Park is comprised of 5 beautiful islands off the coast of Southern California. The park was established in 1980, and consists of 249,354 acres, half of which are under water. The names of the different islands are: Santa Cruz, Anacapa, Santa Rosa, Santa Barbara, and San Miguel. This was the 6th National […]

Pinnacles National Park

Pinnacles National Park was promoted from a National Monument to National Park in January 2013. This park is a natural wonder, formed by volcanic activity from millions of years ago. It’s full of canyons, caves (& bats), rock spires, unique vegetation, and infamous California condors. Pinnacles is not a large park, only having about 30 […]

Sequoia & Kings Canyon

After ending our magical time at Yosemite, we ventured towards Visalia, CA, which was conveniently located about 45 minutes from the entrance of Sequoia National Park. I won’t spend too much time reminiscing about our time in Visalia, but if you’d ask me or my friend, this was probably the worst part of our trip. […]

Yosemite National Park

First and foremost, Yosemite National Park is a magical place. This was the 2nd National Park stop on our road trip through California this past summer, and has been at the top of my list for as long as I can remember. My friend is a rockstar and landed us a campsite in Yosemite Valley […]

Great Basin National Park

Great Basin National Park is located in eastern Nevada and is about 3.5 hours from Salt Lake. This was stop #1 and National Park #1 on the big 10-day National Park road trip we took this past summer. Our plan once arriving at Great Basin was to drive the scenic loop, hike the Alpine Lakes […]

Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park is located in northwest Montana on the Canadian border. The Continental Divide splits the park between East and West Glacier. When open, the Going-to-the-Sun Road connects the two sides of the park in roughly 50 miles, however when its closed, it takes about 2 hours to get from one side to the […]

Death Valley National Park

Death Valley National Park is a land of extremes. It’s America’s hottest and driest national park, and sits on the California- Nevada border. Because Death Valley gets extremely hot, the peak season is from October- April when there are cooler temperatures. We visited in April, just as temperatures were starting to heat up. Now, I’m […]

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Believe it or not, Great Smoky National Park is the most visited national park in the country, with over 11 million visitors annually. This park lies on the Tennessee/ North Carolina state line, and is pretty much equally split between the two states. My friend and I explored a small portion of the Tennessee side […]

Grand Teton National Park

Grand Teton National Park borders Jackson Hole, Wyoming and lies just south of Yellowstone National Park. It’s an easy 4.5-hour drive from Salt Lake, and I was lucky enough to explore the Tetons with my brother and sister-in-law while they were visiting me in Utah. Side note: after writing a few blogs, I’ve started to […]

Washington National Parks

This was another one of our trips planned by a cheap flight deal from Salt Lake. There are three national parks in Washington: Olympic, Mount Rainier, and North Cascades National Parks. All three parks are a reasonable drive from Seattle. Olympic Our first stop on our fall road trip was Olympic National Park. This is […]