Inspiring travel stories, tips, and guides from a couple exploring the world one destination at a time.
Last Updated: September 14, 2026
Two facts sit inside a twenty-mile circle here. The town is named after the officer whose 1874 expedition found gold in these hills and broke the treaty that guaranteed them to the Lakota. And the cave south of it is where, in the Lakota account, people came into the world. You can drive between the two in half an hour.
Last Updated: September 14, 2026
The Badlands are almost exactly halfway through their existence. Water began carving them out of the prairie around 500,000 years ago, and at the current rate of about an inch a year, the Park Service expects them to be gone in roughly another 500,000. Everything in the photographs below is temporary. That is not a melancholy thought so much as a useful one, because it explains why the place looks the way it does — nothing here is hard enough to last.
Last Updated: July 18, 2026
Flaming Gorge was named by John Wesley Powell during his expedition down the Green River in 1869 because of the spectacular red sandstone cliffs that are adjacent to the river.
Last Updated: July 18, 2026
Lamar Valley from West Yellowstone is over a two-hour drive one way — but every mile of it rewards you with geothermal wonders, wildlife encounters, and sweeping fall scenery. In the past we’ve stayed in Gardiner at the north entrance, which puts Lamar Valley much closer. Along the way, Norris Geyser Basin, Terrace Spring, Beryl Spring, Gibbon Falls, and Mammoth Hot Springs all make excellent stops. Yellowstone National Park — established in 1872 as America’s first national park — never fails to astonish us, and autumn is one of the most magical times to visit.
Last Updated: July 12, 2026
From Amarillo, Texas, we headed west and then north into the mountains of northern New Mexico — a five-hour drive that climbed steadily from the flat Texas Panhandle to the high alpine country around Eagle Nest at 8,300 feet. The drive itself provided an early complication: somewhere along the route, either diesel fuel contamination with water or the rapid change in altitude was causing the engine to run rough under load. Purging the fuel filter helped, but a visit to the Freightliner dealer in Albuquerque was clearly going to be necessary. We filed it away and pressed on. What was waiting at the end of the drive was worth every mile of it.
Last Updated: May 2, 2026
Most people driving through southeastern Arizona are focused on Tombstone or Bisbee — and those are absolutely worth your time. But tucked between those famous destinations and the Mexican border lies one of Arizona’s best kept secrets: the Sonoita and Elgin wine country, a high desert grassland region at roughly 5,000 feet elevation where rolling hills, mountain panoramas, and surprisingly excellent wineries await. We came for the wine, stayed for the wildlife, and left having seen pronghorn antelope, world-class birding in Patagonia, a wildfire in the Dragoon Mountains, and a spontaneous snowstorm — all in the same week.
