Westward Ho!

We're on a westward trip this spring, and have seen such incredible natural scenery between Michigan and Idaho so far.  I will share some photos of those views below. While it is frustrating to find State and National park campgrounds full or nearly at capacity this early in the season it is also encouraging to see how many people visit these parks, stay at their campgrounds, and appreciate these natural resources. It is clearly confirmation that these nature reserves are used, revered, and valued.  These are always our "destination campgrounds" - the places we choose to call home for several days to two weeks when we travel, but they are also beautiful places to stop overnight as we have done on most of this trip.

My heartfelt hope is that the governmental agencies that oversee the managment of these resources and the elected officials who designate funding for these sacred places continue to recognize their irreplaceable value and fight for the funding and manpower needed to maintain them as the national treasures that they are.

First night of travel we spent at Cherry Glen Corps of Engineers campground in Iowa (detailed in previous blog entry.  The second night we had pushed through a long day of driving and just wanted to get off the highway, so stayed at a private campground, named - aptly enough - I-80 Lakeside Campground; while there were traffic noises from the nearby highway, overall it was a nice-enough little campground for on overnight stay.

Our third night on the road was spent at a Wyoming State Park, where the sky was magnificent and the park beautifully maintained; we could have easily remained here for a number of days just to relax and enjoy the scenery, but on this trip we are more destination-bound than most trips, so just one glorious evening it was.

On day four of our drive we entered Grand Teton National Park and were so blown away by the beauty that we decided to spend two nights and the day in between just savoring the scenery.  When we started our drive that day, the temperature was in the high 50's in the morning, by the time we had wound our way up into the still snow-covered mountains it had dropped to 37, then climbed again to high 40s and low 50's by the time we reached the Colter Village RV Campground in the valley of the park.