For the ninth or tenth straight year, Kim and I bought an America the Beautiful Pass (or its predecessors, the National Parks Passport and Golden Eagle Passport). For $80 a year, it’ll get you and your family into every National Park unit and the other federal land management agency lands for free. Given the fabulous … Read more
We’ve stopped in Van Horn, Texas on a few occasions before. Each time, we managed to hear or read about the local Chuy’s restaurant, which is rather infamous. Apparently, the restaurant attracted the attention of John Madden years ago, who has said it’s his favorite place to eat. And Chuy’s has naturally exploited the hell … Read more
I was fortunate to have an opportunity to bring in the new year from New Orleans. To qualify the following random thoughts, I’m not a partier, not much of a dancer, not a drinker, and I was here with my wife as part of a much-larger national park roadtrip. As a nondrinker, many of the … Read more
One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about my national park quest is that it pushes me to visit places I wouldn’t otherwise visit. It encourages me to step outside of what I know and am interested in to at least dabble in something new. I may not come away with a deep appreciation of … Read more
Today we visited Poverty Point National Monument (or rather, State Historic Site) and Vicksburg National Military Park. For all the details, check out my post on scottandkimmie.com. Beyond the recap, I wanted to toss out a couple more thoughts about our trip so far. First, we’ve seen two units – Big Thicket National Preserve and … Read more
It’s Christmas afternoon and you probably have a bunch of new stuff. Cool stuff indeed, and maybe even some not quite as cool stuff, too. Either way, a lot more stuff has entered your life in the last 24 hours. Here’s a simply way you can help ensure that all this stuff doesn’t add to … Read more
It feels like we’re being unfaithful. In less than 72 hours, Kim and I will be departing on another of our national park roadtrips. It’ll be the first time we’ll be roadtripping sans Forester since we got her. It feels a little weird. It’s the right decision to leave her at home – she’s in … Read more
On Wednesday night, I attended the annual Gathering of the Greens down at the Historic Y building in Tucson. I happened to have several meetings scheduled down there for earlier in the day, and after the prodding of several colleagues, I decided to stick around for at least a bit of the celebration. I’m glad … Read more
Salon recently published an interview with author John Ortved about The Simpsons entitled “Why ‘The Simpsons’ no longer matters.” It’s a short but good interview and worth the quick read. Like many people my age, I grew up on The Simpsons. I remember watching it while it was still an odd series of shorts on … Read more
It’s been nearly 10 years since the creation of the National Landscape Conservation System – America’s newest system of protected lands managed by the US Bureau of Land Management. That’s all a mouthful to say that it’s been a decade (and sometimes two) since some of the most interesting, most wild, and mostly-unknown special places in … Read more