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…
Life is Great in the Smokies
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.…
Chattahoochee and Tallulah – More Georgia Peaches
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…
Georgia Parks on My Mind
In Georgia we hit two National Park sites, one state park and one county park. Although not showstoppers in their own right, each one was worth a visit as part of our journey. This first post will cover the first…
Hugging the Trees at Congaree
Our guess is most people have probably never heard of South Carolina’s Congaree National Park, and that’s too bad. Or, that’s too good, if you want to experience nature without the crowds. Congaree is one of the newer parks in…
Southern Charmer #2: Charleston
Our second contender for Southern city charm is Charleston, South Carolina. Arriving late in the afternoon, we first stopped off at the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site in adjacent Mt. Pleasant. There we learned about the “forgotten founder” — one…
Southern Charmer #1: Savannah
Whether you’re a culture vulture, a history buff, a foodie or a photographer, it’s hard to go wrong in Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina. These two rival romantic cities vie for vacationers’ attention, and most people seem to prefer…
History & Nature Meet at Timucuan
“Where the waters meet” is the tagline of Timucuan Ecological & Historic Preserve tucked into a corner of northern Florida outside Jacksonville. Those waters are the Nassau and St. Johns rivers flowing into the Atlantic Ocean. This park is also…
More To Love at Morikami
It was love at first site for us at the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach. We stopped in there on our drive north between national parks on Florida’s Atlantic coast. Our Morikami visit has been one of…
Caribbean Flavors: Miami and Biscayne
After our Everglades and Big Cypress adventures we were ready to camp in a bit more style, so we used Miami-Dade County’s Larry and Penny Thompson Memorial Park campground near the Miami Zoo as a base for a few days.…