Traveling Huntleys

Inspiring travel stories, tips, and guides from a couple exploring the world one destination at a time.

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Kapalua and the West Maui Coastline, Hawaii

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From Kihei we drove north along Highway 30 — past the still-rebuilding town of Lahaina, past the resort corridor of Kaanapali, and past the famous Kapalua Plantation Course, home of the PGA Tour’s Sentry Tournament of Champions — all the way to the Nakalele Blowhole on the rugged northwestern coast of Maui. We skipped a stop in old Lahaina town; more than two years after the devastating August 2023 wildfires that destroyed much of the historic district. Commercial reconstruction remains limited and Front Street is still far from what it once was. Residential rebuilding has moved considerably faster, but visitors who knew old Lahaina should prepare for a very different scene. The drive itself is magnificent — one of the most scenic stretches on the island, climbing along the coast with sweeping Pacific views and the green ridgelines of the West Maui Mountains rising to the east.

Rugged lava rock shoreline and turquoise Pacific Ocean at Kapalua, West Maui, Hawaii
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Crossing Tornado Country in an RV: Nine Years of Planning Travel Around the Weather

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Last Updated: September 9, 2026

For nine years we left Florida in April and drove north. It was never a casual decision. April is when the country’s severe weather season is at its most violent across the Deep South, and we were crossing it in a house we had to tow. The worry came back every single spring, and it was the one part of the calendar we never fully solved.

We went anyway, and the reason was flowers. Leaving the Gulf coast in April and working slowly northwest meant traveling inside the spring itself — redbud and magnolia and fruit blossom in the southern states, then daffodils and tulips, then the woodland flowers coming up through last year’s leaves: bloodroot, trillium, jack-in-the-pulpit, mayapple. Keep moving north at the right pace and spring never ends. It takes four to six weeks to get from Florida to the Rockies at three hours of driving a day, which is how we traveled, and that put us into the mountains just as their spring was starting. Yellowstone’s RV parks open around the end of May. The Canadian parks open mid-May into June. It all lines up.

Here is the part we only understood properly much later. The thing that made the April departure worth it — the bloom moving north — is driven by exactly the same machinery that makes April dangerous. Warmth pushes north out of the Gulf, the jet stream follows it, and the boundary between the two is where both the wildflowers and the tornadoes are. We were not traveling near the severe weather season. We were traveling with it, at about the same speed, for six weeks, every year.

What follows is how we actually handled that, and everything else the sky did to us over nine years: wind, snow, cold, heat, hail and hurricane season. Some of it is what we got right. Some of it is just luck, and we should say so plainly at the start — in nine years we were never once in a situation where we had to take shelter from a tornado. That is not a technique. It is mostly the result of being unwilling to drive on days other people drove.

Snow, Sequoia National Park, California
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Kentucky Travel Guide: Mammoth Cave, the Bourbon Trail, Red River Gorge and the Land Between the Lakes

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Last Updated: September 9, 2026

We have crossed Kentucky twice, two years apart, in two different rigs and two very different springs. The first was March 2020, northbound out of Nashville and the Natchez Trace in our Newmar motorhome, arriving at Mammoth Cave the day after the National Park Service cancelled every underground tour in the park. The country was closing behind us as we drove. The second was April and May 2022, a full month in the Airstream with Jake the dog, working west to east and then back again across the whole width of the state — caves, bourbon, sandstone arches, elk, and a tornado scar we did not expect to find.

Kentucky rewards that kind of slow crossing. It is a small state that behaves like several larger ones stacked together, and after eight posts and a month on its back roads, three things kept surfacing. The first is rock. Most of south-central and western Kentucky sits on Mississippian limestone, which water dissolves — that is why the longest cave on earth is here, why springs rise out of hillsides, why creeks vanish into the ground mid-field, and why the floor gave way under the National Corvette Museum in 2014. Push east and the limestone disappears under a hard cap of sandstone that water cannot dissolve, only undercut, and you get the opposite landscape: no caves, but a hundred natural arches and a waterfall that has walked itself upstream for miles.

The second is that a striking amount of Kentucky’s public land was paid for by a private fortune made in something else entirely. Bourbon money bought Bernheim Forest and gave it away. A du Pont chemical fortune bought Cumberland Falls to stop a power dam and handed it to the Commonwealth. Red River Gorge is the variant with no money in it at all — that one was saved by people who simply refused to let it be flooded.

The third is quieter and runs underneath the first two. Somebody paid for these places. Mammoth Cave National Park was assembled by condemnation, and the farms, churches and cemeteries are still in there. Land Between the Lakes was created in 1963 by moving roughly 800 families off a peninsula and leaving 270 cemeteries behind. None of that makes these places less worth visiting. It just means somebody paid for them, and it is worth knowing who.

This guide is organized geographically rather than in the order we drove it, and each section links to the full post — photographs, practical detail and all — for that part of the state.

Cave Hill, Louisville, Kentucky
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Random Photos San Diego

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Random photos come up either with our mirror-less cameras or with an iPhone when not traveling. They are rarely our best photos but remind us of everyday life around our home. Each day we take a morning walk and along the way we will stumble across something interesting. With every season something new presents itself. One of us usually has a camera or their phone everywhere we go and ready to snap a picture of something interesting. We like the spontaneity, often using natural light and avoiding flash to keep the moment genuine. It’s about being open to capturing interesting scenes or moments that arise unexpectedly, whether during a walk, a drive, or any other activity. Often, because of the spontaneity, the photos are not the sharpest or best composed or have the best lighting, but they capture the moment.

Hooded Oriole, Random Photos, San Diego, CA
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Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada

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Valley of Fire State Park is nestled in the heart of Nevada. It is a breathtaking testament to the power of nature. With its otherworldly landscapes, vibrant rock formations, and rich history, this park is a must-visit for any outdoor enthusiast or nature lover. Last time we were here was with my sister in 2018. From Cedar City, Utah it was about a 3-hour drive. We stopped in Overton, Nevada at the Inside Scoop for lunch.

Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada
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