Assateague Island National Seashore, a barrier island that protects Chincoteague Bay, has a northern Virginia district and a southern Maryland district. We arrived shortly before dusk at our campground on the Maryland side and spotted a few of the feral…
Beyond the monuments, any visitor to Washington, D.C. must take advantage of the free museums, especially the National Gallery of Art and the assorted Smithsonian Institution museums that surround the National Mall. The National Gallery of Art literally and figuratively…
We’d heard that getting same-day tickets to certain Washington, D.C., attractions would be difficult if we arrived after or 7 or 8 a.m. when lines began to form. We fretted as we hurried to the National Mall at nearly 8:30…
On our way to Washington, D.C., we stopped off in Norfolk to visit my friend Marci, who was kind enough to show us some of the coastal Virginia highlights. She took us through the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel, the…
No trip to the Outer Banks would be complete without a stop at the Wright Brothers National Memorial between Nags Head and Kitty Hawk. The famous aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville made aeronautical history here on Dec. 17, 1903, by…
The day after our Cape Lookout excursion we had intended to take a series of ferries to the southern tip of Cape Hatteras National Seashore and drive north from there. But a storm was blowing in, making ferry departures from…
In a refreshing and much-welcome break from our campground-and-motel life on the road, we spent a few days with my cousin, Kelly, near Charlotte, North Carolina, and are eternally grateful for the good food, hospitality and day trip to the UNC…
Bradley Fork Trail After lunch our first day in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we hiked the Bradley Fork Trail, which led upstream from the Smokemont Campground that we were calling home for a few days. The trail followed the…
We drove into Great Smoky Mountains National Park from the North Carolina side via the cute mountain town of Maggie Valley. Our first item on the agenda: snagging a Smokemont Campground site just across from the Oconaluftee River’s Bradley Fork.…
Our next stop was the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area in the suburbs northeast of Atlanta. This National Park property covers 48 miles of the river, although the land-based park areas are dispersed into multiple sections at various points along…