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JohnBoy’s Travel Blog

Photos and stories of my journey across the US and Canada

I am back in Durham after my big 2025 road trip and have now resumed posts.  I apologize for being so far behind but I have reviewed and prepared pictures taken through August 31 for posting and will post a few things at a time so as not to overwhelm people.  I will continue to review and prepare photos taken in September and will have them ready when I exhaust the list I have already.

Thank you for your patience!

I will eventually (probably the summer of 2026) be creating a number of pdf files which list all my previous posts, enabling visitors to find specific posts from earlier trips (over 1,400 and counting).  I know how to do it, I just need the time.  Lord knows I had plenty of that at home in the weeks leading up to my departure, but it was consumed with other projects, prepping and packing.  I will let everyone know when they are completed and will email them to anyone interested. 

If you use the calendar grid to the right, go back to May, 2025.  Then click on May 13th.  There you will find a post I made which contains 100 links to some older posts from 2018 (San Diego)/2019 (Eastern Canada) to give you an idea what I’m talking about.  You may also use the calendar grid on the right side of this page to go to any other month the blog existed.  I started the blog in the Spring of 2016.  I traveled and took photos for two years prior to that but have only posted a select few, and some of my early posts only included 1 photo (I was a blog newbie) and I need to post more from the tens of thousands of photos I’ve taken.

FOR THOSE OF YOU NEW TO THE BLOG:

Welcome to my travel blog, where I post photos of my trips throughout the United States and Canada.  For details on my intent for this project please click on “About” in the upper right hand corner.  If you have comments or requests please feel free to contact me by clicking on “Contact” in the upper right hand corner.

If you are new to the blog please note that you are seeing the most recent posts first.  As you scroll down you are going back in time.  You may read statements which may not make much sense right at the moment because they may refer to a discussion earlier in the blog.  If you want to find posts for a specific place (e.g. Grand Canyon) enter it in the search box.  You may also use the calendar grid to use the “way-back” function to time travel back to a particular day’s posts.

Enjoy, and PLEASE feel free to share the blog address with others.  Also feel free to copy and save any photos I’ve taken.  You should be able to right-click on them and save them to your device (but if you sell them and make a gazillion dollars, please slip me a zillion or two. We’ll just keep that between us).  The photos are best viewed on a computer or tablet, not a phone.  The larger the screen the better.

Getting to Denali NP – Part 2 of 2

September 19, 2025

Here are more things I saw as I drove north on Hwy 3 from Talkeetna and the Denali Viewpoints towards Denali National Park.

I am adding more lines of text here to try and make the photo below appear larger in the actual post.

If you look closely at the two photos above you may notice that the ground at the base of the mountains is multi-colored. This was the first area where I noticed it, and it will continue to appear in many parts of Alaska. You will see better examples of the effect in future posts. I have determined that it is multi-colored vegetation. There are also some places where parts of the mountains themselves display various colors due to different kinds of volcanic rock, but the areas in these photos were all at low elevation and are definitely vegetation.

The photo above was taken as I was arriving in the little town of Cantwell. I am very happy that I took all of the photos in this two-part post up to this point today because when I travel this route again in about 2 weeks I wouldn’t have seen ANY of what I photographed due to extremely low visibility.

I finally arrived at the entrance road to Denali National Park. According to their Park map it is 120 miles further north to get to Fairbanks, and it is 237 miles south back to Anchorage.

My next posts will include photos from within the Park. I will only be here for about two hours today to pickup maps and get a feel for what to expect in the small part of the Park I will be able to access. I will explain further in my next post. I will have to leave later in the day because I still have a two hour drive to Fairbanks. When I return to the Park later in my trip to spend 3 1/2 days here I will be staying in Healy which is only about 20 miles up the road.

Getting to Denali NP – Part 1 of 2

September 19, 2025

After my disappointment with the limited views at the various Denali Viewpoints I continued north on Highway 3 to get to the National Park entrance, which is about 100 miles away. Here are some of the things I saw along the way:

A rare look at me! I had bought a dark brown hooded sweatshirt to add to my collection for this trip. It was now hunting season and I didn’t want to be mistaken for a brown bear (aka grizzly bear) by either a hunter or a brown bear so I donned my Safety Sam vest for the times I was out of the car taking photos. More importantly it was also Fat Bear Week and I didn’t want to be captured, weighed, tagged and released!

My car was in a parking area and I was up by the main road. This was actually looking back towards the southwest.

More snow-covered mountains under some low gray clouds.

And a few high peaks with some snow on them not far off the highway:

Below is an old motel called “The Igloo”. There were No Trespassing signs and a chain across the access road, and it looked like it has been abandoned. No wonder, as it is out in the proverbial middle of nowhere… It was built in the 70’s but never opened. There was nothing else around for miles…

The road then opened up a bit and the mountains were further away.

This is looking back from another angle at two mountains shown earlier in this post.

The photos in this part of the post cover about an hour and a half of driving (including stops to take pictures).

(Continued in next post)

Mt. Denali photos – Day Three

September 19, 2025

Don’t get too excited….

Today I will drive from Talkeetna to Fairbanks, with an orientation stop in Denali National Park itself. Most of the photos of Mt. Denali I have posted thus far were taken at several viewpoints along Hwy 3. Those stops were all located in Denali State Park, not the National Park, and were about 100 miles from the National Park entrance.

Denali National Park (and Preserve) is enormous. At over 6 million acres it covers 9,446 square miles and is larger than the state of New Hampshire. And I stand corrected on a comment I made a few days ago. Denali National Park WAS at one time called Mount McKinley National Park. Even though our current president changed the name of the mountain back to McKinley, the Park is still (as of this writing) called Denali.

My first stop on the way to Fairbanks will be at the viewpoints I took photos from the past two days. You may recall that the first day was sunny and clear, but coming up to Talkeetna yesterday it was overcast and the snow-covered “Denali Complex” mountains were completely obscured. Today would be somewhere in between.

When I left my Airbnb in Talkeetna I saw two moose (a parent and a youngster) cross the road a ways ahead of me as I was driving back to Hwy 3. I was actually on my phone (hands free) dictating a voicemail message to some friends back home. I remember saying “OMG – there are two moose – gotta go…” and terminating the call but by the time I stopped and got my phone out of the cupholder carrier to take a picture they were in the woods on the opposite side of the road.

I stopped at a gas station when I got out to Hwy 3 to top off my tank for the day and saw this Denali bus.

Strange for two reasons – a) I was 136 miles from the Park entrance, and b) the buses had stopped running several days earlier on a pre-arranged schedule.

After filling my tank and getting coffee I headed for the Southern Viewpoint. This is what I saw when I got there:

I could only see the base of the big mountains. This is a closer view with the digital camera and zoom lens:

I drove a few miles further north on Hwy 3 to the Campground Viewpoint. It wasn’t any better. These are zoomed in even closer with the digital camera.

And here are some other mountains I could see further north in the Alaska Range (with the digital camera):

Those are the last pictures of the mountains from Hwy 3 that I will take on this trip. When I come back up this way for the final time on October 1 I wouldn’t even see the black mountains in the foreground as that day would have extremely low clouds and I could only see about a mile in any direction until I got further north of these viewpoints.

When I come back up Hwy 3 for the final time this trip I will spend 3 1/2 days in the National Park and will have views of other mountains, but for reasons I will explain later it is doubtful that I will see Mt. Denali again.

I will, however, be spending about 2 hours in Denali National Park later today so you will get a first look at some of the mountains I could see from within the Park.

Fairbanks Loop

September 18, 2025

I referenced this “loop” in my previous post and thought it might be wise to post a picture of map and explain my thinking:

(Photo credit: AAA.com Alaska Map)

The two biggest towns in Alaska are Anchorage and Fairbanks. There are major highways (1,2,3 and 4) which connect them in a loop fashion. I will use smaller towns along them to illustrate my overview.

A small town fairly close to Anchorage (lower left corner of the map) is called Wasilla. From there north to Fairbanks is 316 driving miles on Hwy 3 and according to Google Maps takes 5 hours 22 minutes to drive. Coming down the east side of the loop, Fairbanks to Glennallen is in two parts – Fairbanks southeast to Delta Junction on Hwy 2, then Delta Junction south to Glennallen on Hwy 4. Total distance of those two parts is 247 miles and drive time is 4 hours 20 minutes. Then from Glennallen roughly west to Wasilla is on Hwy 1. Distance is 148 miles and drive time is 2 hours 38 minutes.

To do the whole loop covers 711 miles and takes 12 hours and 20 minutes (without stops). Hence the need to break it up into bite-sized pieces.

This first lap I am stopping in Talkeetna, Fairbanks, Gakona (near Glennallen) and eventually back to Anchorage. I was originally going to do a second loop in the opposite direction later in the trip because I often see things driving the opposite direction on some roads than I saw going the other way. It turned out that I would do both loops in the same direction for reasons which I will explain when I get to that point in my trip.

My first loop is to visit those towns and get a feel for road conditions and elevation changes. This is my first time in Alaska and I have no idea what to expect. My first big lesson was that Talkeetna is a LONG way from Denali National Park, and the Alaska Range where the Denali Mountains are located is also a LONG way from Denali National Park. On my second loop I will stay in Healy, about 20 miles north of the Park entrance, and visit the Park for 3 1/2 days with much less driving!

Anchorage to Talkeetna

September 18, 2025

When I left Anchorage to make my first loop up to Fairbanks and back (covering several days) I had booked my first Airbnb in the little town of Talkeetna (pronounced tal-KEET-na). I drove past the turnoff when I made my impromptu trip up to see Mount Denali on a clear day yesterday. Talkeetna is actually about 14 miles off Hwy 3 on a roughly parallel road. Today I once again overshot the turnoff and went right to the various viewpoints I had visited the day before.

Before I left Anchorage I took this photo of a neon sign I saw on a tiny ice cream shop I drove past every day. For some reason I liked it’s simplicity:

As I drove north on Hwy 3 I saw this vehicle just off the highway to my right, in the little town of Houston AK.

It was promoting the “Grass Station,” a marijuana dispensary (of which there are many on Canada and Alaska).

Points for being clever.

I also passed an elementary school with this impressive (covered) outdoor recreation space for the kids to safely play away from the highway:

There was also a fenced in area on a grassy lawn on the other side of the building with the usual park-type playground equipment for kids.

Just up the road from the school was a company which apparently makes and/or markets seaplanes:

The plane on the roof was motorized to rotate slowly. There was a small lake behind this building with a few seaplanes docked, and I took a video of one taking off. I saw LOTS of seaplanes flying around while I was in Anchorage and will have photos later in the trip of a lake by the Anchorage International Airport which claims to have the highest concentration of seaplanes in the world.

When I finally made it to the South Viewpoint I had visited on a clear day yesterday, this is what I saw:

Exactly NONE of the big, snow covered Denali mountains. Only the shorter black mountains in front of them.

I really had nothing else to do so I just hung around and talked with other visitors. It was too far to drive up to the actual Denali National Park entrance, and I will be stopping there tomorrow on my way to Fairbanks.

After a while I headed back to Talkeetna to be there at my check-in time. It was a nice new house (bigger than a tiny house but not by much) and even had heated floors! What a concept. It had two levels (my part was at ground level) which is why I really didn’t think of it as a tiny house. The owners lived nearby but I never had a chance to meet them. The house was on a rough unpaved road and was in the woods. They told me I might see moose in the yard but I never did, though two walked across the road a short ways in front of me as I was leaving the next morning. It happened too quick for me to get photos.

I did come upon the Denali Brewing Company on my way to the Airbnb. I was surprised to find it near such a small town.

Oh, and I had seen this colorful display just off Hwy 3 as I drove south to Talkeetna from the Viewpoint.

It was across a large sandy area from the highway but the colors caught my eye so I parked and walked over to take a photo.

Tomorrow I will drive much further north to get to Denali National Park itself and will have a few hours there to get a sneak preview of the Park before continuing on to Fairbanks.

Other Denali Mountains

September 17, 2025

There were a few other mountains in the “Denali Complex” that I could see as I drove about 30 miles further north on Hwy 3 from the Southern Viewpoint. They are mostly other large mountains, but I don’t know exactly which ones they are. And I found three more of Mt. Denali itself, taken from a more northerly viewpoint and which clearly shows the separation of the South and North peaks. Let me show those first:

And I used the digital camera with zoom lens to get a closer look at the two main peaks:

The rest of these are mountains further northeast of Mt. Denali itself. One of them is probably Mt. Silverthorne and another may be Mt. Mather. The Alaska Range continues for quite a distance, and the entire range is aligned from southwest to northeast.

Some photos were taken from the highway and some are from the North Viewpoint (but there was no sign there identifying them as there was at the South Viewpoint). I didn’t want to post these with the others as I presumed that most people were interested in the three main mountains.

The mountains in the Alaska Range southwest of Mt. Foraker are further away from the highway so I never even got a glimpse of them as I drove north. The road had trees on the side in many places which blocked my view, and of course I was mainly focused on driving.

The second one appears to be the same mountain on the left in the photo above it, but the road had turned left so I was looking right at it. They were taken 2 minutes apart.

These were all taken the same day as I took the main Denali photos. I would come back up here the next day but you will see in the next post that it was overcast and I couldn’t see these mountains at all.

Mount Denali, et al – Part 2 of 2

September 17, 2025

These are photos taken at the Denali South Viewpoint. There were signs indicating which mountains I was looking at, how far away they are, and how tall the black mountains (without snow) in front of them are.

We’ll get Mt. Foraker out of the way first. I posted a photo taken from the side road at a higher elevation, which gave me a very good view (see previous post). This was the view from the South Viewpoint:

Not real impressive, eh? Despite Mount Foraker being 17,400 feet tall, the view was being blocked by a 5,150 foot tall mountain (which actually had a little bit of snow on it) much closer to the viewpoint, so you can only see two small parts of Foraker! Signage at the viewpoint indicated Foraker was 45.5 air miles away.

Hunter mountain was a little better. This was taken with the zoom lens:

Mt Hunter is on the left side of the photo above and is actually comprised of three peaks, South (left) at 13,967 feet. Middle (above the right peak on the black mountain) at 13,400 feet, and North (right, in the center of the photo) at 14,574 feet. The whole mountain is on an angle with the right side further away than the left side. Hunter is closer to the road but is still partially blocked by the smaller 4,205 foot peak even closer to the road. The signs at the viewpoint indicated that Hunter North Peak was 37 air miles away.

Here is my best shot of Denali, taken with my smartphone camera:

There will be another one from a little further up the road. Again, the main peak is at 20,310 feet elevation but the black mountain in front is at 5,160 feet and is closer to the viewpoint. South (main) peak was 41.5 air miles away, North peak (to the right) was 43 air miles away.

Here is a shot of Hunter and Denali together (digital w/zoom):

There were 3 other viewpoints further up the road. Campground (just a small pull off area next to the road), 3 miles away, Veterans Park, 15 miles away, and North Viewpoint, 30 miles away.

Here are three photos from Campground:

Foraker:

Still mainly blocked.

Hunter:

Much more defined. I am personally shocked in the difference between this photo of Hunter and the others. I don’t tinker with camera settings other than zooming in.

Denali:

A wider view but with the pesky black mountain blocking. You can also see a wisp of clouds starting to form.

I stopped at Veterans Park further up the road. There were several sobering historical and memorial tributes to various conflicts and branches of the service, as well as this statue:

Here is what the soldier with the binoculars was looking at (Denali):

I drove up to the North Viewpoint but after having been to the others, I was not terribly impressed with what I was seeing.

I had only come up to try and see these mountains on a clear day, and had to drive back to Anchorage for the night. I would come back to these places again when I will be spending a night in Talkeetna, and a third time when I drive from Talkeetna up to Fairbanks, with a brief orientation stop in Denali National Park.

I will return later in my trip when I will spend 3 1/2 days in Denali National Park on my second trip to Fairbanks. Due to weather conditions I will not see these mountains again, and there aren’t many opportunities from within the Park itself which I will explain when I get to that point in my trip.

I was VERY happy that I had the opportunity to come up today and be part of the 33% that could actually see Mt. Denali.

Mount Denali, et al – Part 1 of 2

September 17, 2025

These next two posts will include photos from my first trip to Denali. This first post will show pictures taken on my way north from Anchorage. I have taken LOTS of pictures but have gone through them and selected the best ones for posting.

The name of the mountain itself is subject to some debate but I still call it Denali, as that was the original name given to the mountain centuries ago by the indigenous people who lived here. The name McKinley was first proposed in 1896 to honor candidate, and then President, William McKinley. It was officially changed in 1917 and remained until 2015 when it was changed back to Denali. Our current president changed it back to McKinley in early 2025, shortly after being elected. The National Park has always been called Denali.

My day actually started off with me driving south from Anchorage towards another destination. I stopped at a pullout area next to the highway to take a photo of something and as I was walking back to my car this is what I saw looking north.

It was a clear morning and I immediately knew that what I was seeing in the distance was what I call the “Denali Complex” – a group of mountains in the Alaska Range. That photo was taken at 813am.

I have learned that only about 1/3 of the people who travel to see Mt. Denali actually get to see it because of its tendency to shroud itself in clouds. When I saw it basking in the sun I told myself “I need to go there RIGHT NOW” and immediately turned my car around and headed north. Using the “calculate distance” feature in Google Maps I determined that I was currently 146 air miles (direct point-to-point) from Mt. Denali, though driving there would be much further and it would take over three hours to get to what I later determined was the best and closest viewing spot that was accessible to me.

Here is a map which shows some of the nearby landmarks I will be talking about in these two posts.

(Photo credit: Alaska.org The Alaska Map)

You can see the names of seven of the major mountains. I will only be talking about three in these two posts: Mt. Foraker (Wife), Mt. Hunter (Child) and Mt. Denali (High One). Hunter is harder to find but it is just above the letter ‘R’ in Range, and is closer to the highway than the other two.

For me the best photo opportunity would be at the South Viewpoint, at the bottom of the map, above the white 3 indicating the highway number. I made a dot and wrote the letter V to show approximately where the viewpoint is (though it is actually on the left side of the road driving north). You can also see on the map that even from the viewpoint the mountains are still pretty far away, and the entrance to Denali National Park is way up at the top of the map, over 100 driving miles from the South Viewpoint.

I saw a sign in “Earthquake Park” on the north side of Anchorage where the Denali mountains are sometimes visible on a clear day. A sign there indicated it is 135 air miles away, so I was already over 10 miles further away, and driving there is not a straight shot.

As I drove north, when I got close to the town of Talkeetna I could see Mt. Denali ahead of me.

I tried enlarging the image by cropping out some of the top and bottom but it didn’t really improve the image and I thought I would leave it alone so you could see exactly what I was seeing. I’m not sure exactly where I was when I took that photo at 1021am but I believe I was about 78 air miles away.

Just before getting to the South Viewpoint I noticed Mt. McKinley Lodge Road to the right side of the highway which appeared to climb a hill. I thought that might give me a better perspective so I drove up a short ways and found a spot where I could park and have an opening in the trees.

From that vantage point this was the view of Mt. Denali:

It looks very different from the photo I took south of Talkeetna because of the angle. There is a shorter range of mountains (not currently covered by snow) between where I was and the mountain itself. The highest peak on Denali is obvious and is 20,310 feet above sea level – making it the highest mountain in North America. That is the South peak. The North peak is slightly to the right and is further away from this spot. It rises 19,470 feet above sea level.

This is a shot of Mt. Denali and Mount Hunter, to the left.

Again, Hunter is shorter, at around 14,000 feet, although it is closer to the highway. From this angle it is almost completely hidden by the black mountains in front of it. The part blocking Hunter from this vantage point is about 4,200 feet tall but it is even closer to the highway, making it an effective impediment to seeing Hunter.

Further to the left is Mt. Foraker. This is the best photograph I have of it:

The other photos above were taken with my smartphone camera but this photo of Foraker was taken with my digital camera and zoom lens. Foraker is 17,400 feet tall, and even with that elevation, from other vantage points it is barely visible due to the black mountains. You will see that in the next post.

Here is a photo of all three mountains, taken with my smartphone.

And here is a photo of Denali taken with the zoom lens from this spot:

I estimate that I was 43 air miles from Denali at this spot. The photos from this vantage point were taken around 1114am – three hours after I turned around earlier this morning.

The photos in my next post are the best ones I have of Denali and Hunter. As you will see, you will hardly be able to see Foraker from the South Viewpoint, which is only about three miles from here, further up Hwy 3.

My first full day in Anchorage

September 15, 2025

My first day in Anchorage was not terribly productive from a photo standpoint. I had some personal business to attend to, and of course I went to both the Visitor Center (back to the American spelling!) and the Public Library.

The Visitor Center downtown was very interesting:

From the grass on the roof to the abundance of flowers, it was unlike most others I have been to. Unfortunately this building wasn’t open the first time I went and I had to go in a regular office building behind it. I stocked up on maps and brochures, and asked my questions about mountain and glacier identification. This building would be open the second time I went downtown. Not sure why they alternate between the two…

The second place I went was a Walmart in town. I was unable to renew my various prescriptions in Canada because pharmacy’s there will not fill US prescriptions. I kind of screwed up my 90 days from when I left Durham and had to stagger my meds towards the end until I got to Alaska. I had to go and advise them to expect the information from my doctors in Durham, and give them my insurance information. I then reached out to my doctors here in Durham and requested that they send my refill requests to Anchorage. I have one mail order source and I had them sent that (lower priority) refill to my brother in Arizona. They had filled 2 90-day prescriptions with 100 pills each, so I had some of those pills to keep using.

After that I went to the library! My Airbnb didn’t really have a good workspace to use my laptop and I use it quite a bit in the evening when I am on the road. I actually went to the library every day I was in Anchorage (if I wasn’t on the road somewhere). I noticed this sign in the lobby as I was going downstairs to the exit on my first visit there:

I wanted to study the information I had picked up at the Visitor Center and start forming a plan for my days both here and elsewhere. I had been told that many touristy things in Alaska (and Canada, for that matter) shut down after Labor Day. Some restaurants and touristy things in coastal towns that host cruise ships would be open a little longer, but by mid-September they were starting to wind down, too. Several times I would show up somewhere only to learn that the establishment was closed for the season.

I would be in town 4 nights initially and then return for 3 more nights later in my trip. I didn’t actually do that many things in Anchorage but it was a strategic location to operate from.

I will try to break the mountain monotony and entertain you with some oddball photos of things in town that I found interesting (in my own JohnBoy way)…

When I went to McDonalds for coffee this was my order number:

666 – Sign of the devil….

My Airbnb for the first two nights was in a part of town called Spenard (in fact my hostess called her home the “Weathered Den of Spenard” and even had her business license in that name).

That is a sign, evidently an art project, modeled after a Spam can (and with a fake crow).

This is a burger joint who’s parking lot I used to take the photo above so I felt obligated to have lunch there later in the day.

And that is an original 1957 poster they had inside. It was an interesting place!

The word buckaroo has always appealed to me and this club was also across the street from where I had parked, so of course I added it to my collection..

And the political sign on the side of the club also meant something to me, especially when I read the “fine print”. I used to volunteer at a college radio station when I lived in Pennsylvania (while I was still in high school) and one of the radio serials we aired was called Nick Danger, Third Eye – about a fictional detective. Sure enough, here was a Nicholas Danger running for office…

And I will leave you with this beer ad on the side of another building.

As you can probably tell, I gravitate towards strange things sometimes….

Tomorrow – my first trip to Mount Denali!!

Tok to Anchorage – Part 3 of 3

September 14, 2025

As I continue my drive beyond Eureka Roadhouse I will start to see more mountains partially obscured by clouds at their peaks. I strongly suspect they have snow, and possibly glaciers, on them, and in some cases I could barely make out the presence of something in the clouds. My original plan would have had me traversing this section of road 2 or 3 more times, so I was hoping I would get another “bite at the apple” and come back, hopefully armed with maps which might help explain what I was seeing. That did not work out, as I would only pass this way one more time, and it would be heavily overcast and snowing in places! I will explain in more detail what I get to that point.

So let me show you the rest of the pictures I took today:

There was significant cloud cover over the peak shown above, and I could see quite a bit of snow at the base of the clouds, so I believe there is a substantial mountaintop hiding behind those clouds.

That is a different snow-covered mountain than I showed you in the previous post, and the icefield at the base continued a considerable distance. You will see it at the bottom of most of the following pictures.

I was now past the snow-covered “hidden mountains” and was getting into another part of the day’s trip. I was keeping an eye on my GPS unit and realized I still had two hours of driving to get to Anchorage and check in at my Airbnb. The road had gotten narrower and I was in more traffic. Not knowing what was ahead of me I decided it was probably best to stop taking pictures for the day and just focus on driving.

There were of course more mountains along the way, although the road did open up again later, and I passed through at least two medium sized towns. As I approached Anchorage the highway went to 4-lanes, and in some places 6-lanes, so evidently there is enough traffic to warrant that. Getting to downtown Anchorage was easy and it is a very well laid out city.

I regret that I couldn’t retrace my route and show you more, and perhaps better, photos, but I did the best I could. I saw lots of things on my first full day in the state, and believe me – there is lots more to come. I started this as a 4-part post but decided to cut it down to three. I am trying to break down my posts into manageable pieces and not overwhelm people with too much at a time.