The Adventures of Kinky Reggae: A Vagabond for Beauty

Lost Park was a... UNIQUE day in a canyon. First of all, check out this view on the way to the Roost: They had to do some work on the road... these are the same dunes that overtook the road last year around my birthday; we had to come up with an alternate plan.  We had a different group than usual- me, Brian, Amy and Chase. There are two sections of the canyon; the first is supposed to be dry, but the second has a few pools. Amy and I chose this canyon, and we figured we could bail after the first section if we were too cold to swim. However, we encountered water almost immediately. Chase suggested we turn around. I laughed, thinking he was joking, but he was 100% serious. “Who thought it was safe to do a wet canyon in November? This is a terrible idea!” he said. Obviously, we hadn’t planned on there being that much water in the canyon, which is a bad sign for winter canyoneering prospects. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. Yes, we’d get wet, but we were all wearing technical g

I tried to go to the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site, but it was closed. Nooooooo! Luckily, I plan on going back to the Southeast next summer. The Tuskegee Institute is in the same town. There are several areas to this national monument, so I chose to visit the George Washington Carver Museum. I watched movie and explored the displays of all the things he invented. What a brilliant man! I thought it was especially interesting how he made paint pigments from Alabama clay. I took lots of notes at this site and put them on my Instagram post, but I archived the post (along with many others; there were way too many pictures of my face for this contest) and now I can't find it. :-( My next stop was the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail. I didn't go all the way to Selma, which I now regret after seeing the movie Selma. (This site affected me so much that I bought a class set of "Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom" for my students, and then we watched Selm

Since this trip happened two months ago, it almost seems pointless to blog about it. But I want to make sure I blog about every national park site I've been to, even if there's not much to say. Okay, so, when I was visiting my parents in Chicago, I realized I still had some time left before school started to visit park sites. Also, I was having so much fun with the Pic Your Park contest, I wasn't ready to stop! So, I decided to visit Alabama. My parents were baffled and thought it was a terrible idea and don't understand why I'm in such a hurry to see all the parks. Honestly, it was not a good financial decision, but I have no regrets because I ended up really enjoying this trip! I started out by visiting Stones River National Battlefield in Tennessee. I hiked around this area called The Slaughter Pen. 24,000 people were killed, wounded, or captured here. Just like most battlefields, this place had an eerie energy. The next morning, I visited Chickamauga &

Friday was the last day of the Pic Your Park Contest, and it was the most perfect day. I have a million parks to blog about in between D.C. and California, but for now I’ll just talk about my amazing day yesterday.  (Also, I feel like I need to say that I’m not trying to be smug here. So many times, life does not go according to plan! I couldn’t believe how the universe seemed to be working in my favor for just this one day.)  I woke up early in Reno and was hiking on the PCT when the sun came up. This actually put me a little behind schedule; I just wanted to keep hiking and see what was around the next corner or beyond the next ridge and finally realized I’d been wandering too long and needed to get back. But it was just so beautiful!  There was hardly any traffic on the drive to Point Reyes. I’ve visited there before and will visit again, so I took a quick selfie and continued on.  I drove over the Golden Gate Bridge (which I still get so excited about every time I do it) and easily