Photo Blog with Waterfalls, Hiking, Outdoors, and other Adventures
Climbed out from Carlsbad Caverns with enough daylight left for long-shot destinations. Where am I headed next? Upwards into the mountains a bit in search of places less traveled. Clouds were getting moody and threatening rain – not much fell, but the backdrop they provided was fantastic. Sitting Bull Falls If you follow this blog, … Read more
I’m posting out of order today in honor of the #optoutside movement started by REI to encourage people to skip the evil that is Black Friday shopping and instead get outdoors. Luckily today in Wisconsin we had a mini heat wave and tied record highs around 65 degrees which made it an easy choice! Before … Read more
Woke up and left Gatlinburg with some time for day hiking before the next destination. Cold and wet weather killed most of our planned hikes, but we decided to try our luck on Max Patch, one of the most popular viewpoints along the Appalachian Trail. Remember that smoky fog from yesterday? Well that doesn’t look too … Read more
Several days into the trip and we finally made it to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. First stop was Clingmans Dome, the highest point in Tennessee and the infamous Appalachian Trail. Views here looking over the mountain range are normally quite amazing, however today Mother Nature had other plans. Driving up the 7 mile … Read more
After leaving Waterloo Falls, I was itching to do some actual hiking. Next stop was Cummins Falls State Park which was only 15 minutes away by car. Weather today was nearly perfect – sunny and about 60 degrees, which felt like summer compared to what I left in Wisconsin. I started by hiking the Upstream … Read more
The final stop on this particular weekend tour was Aztalan State Park located east of Madison, WI. I had known going in that this particular site wasn’t “epic” in any sense outside of the cultural/historical appreciation aspect and wasn’t expecting much. Thankfully with that mindset I wasn’t disappointed. First – the rain. I finally remembered … Read more
Rain continued all night and into today with no sign of stopping. Thanks to a friend’s advice from Idaho to “be here now”, there was no way I could let it stop me. To begin my trip home, the next stop was Rib Mountain State Park. This is a popular ski destination and is heavily … Read more
Last winter I started dreaming up “side quests” for future journeys – mostly to help discover new places to visit, but also as a pseudo bucket-list to keep me moving. One dark and cold night, I was using my Google-fu and came across the concept of highpointing which is to visit all the highest points … Read more
Last night I was informed by park attendants while at Willow River State Park that rain would begin promptly at 6am today. Sure enough, heavy thunderstorms started at 6:15am. Thankfully I woke early and broke down camp quick. My next stop was not planned – more of an “I’m bored and tired of driving in rain” … Read more
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I’ve been quite distracted with life & other adventures this past month. Since I’m stuffed with turkey and cannot move much, figured now is a good time for catch-up on my posting backlog. Stay tuned, I have about 20 new places to share in the pipeline! Back to this post originally from … Read more