Eureka Peak, at elevation 5,521 ft (1,683 m), is the fourth highest in Joshua Tree National Park and the highest that is road accessible. From the end of the road, a short walk leads to the summit with sweeping views in all directions. On our third and final day in Joshua Tree National Park, we…
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Joshua Tree National Park Day 2
Joshua Tree National Park straddles the boundary of the higher-altitude Mojave Desert and the lower-altitude Colorado Desert. We’d spent the previous day in the Mojave Desert portion and on our second day drove south into the Colorado Desert to a less-visited area of the park at Cottonwood. The plant life there is quite different, with…
Winter Hiking
One of the many reasons we loved spending time in Norway was the countless boat-accessible view hikes. Washington state’s mountain hikes aren’t nearly as close to the water, but they do compete well with Norway for fabulous scenery. When we’d previously lived full-time in Seattle, we spent most of our free time on Dirona and…
West Seattle
West Seattle is a group of Seattle neighborhoods known for their many public beaches and parks, several with wonderful view east to downtown or west to the Olympic Mountains. The Duwamish River separates the two parts of city, and also is home to the Port of Seattle and several parks. A passenger-only ferry runs between…
Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA is a popular tourism destination, with the Pacific Ocean on one side and the steeply rising Santa Ynez Mountains on the other. The city has excellent restaurants and accommodations, wonderful hiking in the mountains, and water activities in the offshore Channel Islands. Those are sufficient enough attractions for us to go, but…
Gear We Like: LOQI Bag
Living aboard while travelling the world often involves opportunistic shopping. If we see something we want or need, it’s best to just buy it on the spot. We never know if we’ll return to the same store, or if that product will still be available when we do. One way we make this work is…
Franklin Falls
Franklin Falls, just west of Snoqualmie Pass, gush 70 ft (21m) over a cliff into a pool below, with a narrow hiking trail that leads almost underneath. The falls are spectacular in the spring runoff, but even more so after particularly cold winter weather, when icicles encrust the cliff face. We’d been wanting to see…
Queen Anne
Queen Anne Hill, at 456 feet (139 m) high, is the highest named hill in Seattle and easily visible from our apartment. Three large red-and-white broadcast towers, landmarks in the city that are visible for miles, stand atop the hill and make it even more prominent. After an 1875 windstorm flattened many of the trees…
US Naval Undersea Museum
The US Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport contains over 39,000 artifacts related to undersea weapons, submarine technology, diving and salvage artifacts, and undersea vehicle technology. In addition to extensive indoor displays, the museum’s several large outdoor exhibits include the sail of the USS Sturgeon, the lead ship in the Sturgeon-class of 37 fast-attack submarines used…
Snoqualmie Pass
Snoqualmie Pass carries Interstate 90 throught the Cascade Mountains between Seattle and Spokane. At 3,015 feet (919 m), it is the lowest of Washington State’s three major year-round east-west mountain passes, but the closest to Seattle at a mere 52 miles (80 km) to the east. This makes the Summit at Snoqualmie resort an easy…
