We’d heard McCall, Idaho was a great place, but did not expect it to be one of our FAVORITE places we’ve visited yet in the Lucky Charm. With an abundance of fabulous outdoor recreation and an adorable lakeside town, we were charmed! Also, it was here that I spotted and photographed only the second fox I’ve ever seen in my life (I...
June, 2017: The Lucky Charm’s 2017 Summer Adventure has arrived! With 4,251 miles tooling around Idaho, Washington and Oregon (route map at the end of this post), we are super excited to explore the Upper Northwest! Snow-capped mountains ringing Idaho’s Sun Valley area welcomed us, where it is well-known for winter skiing but equally...
Summer hit hard at the end of May in Phoenix … a little cool-water therapy was in order! And … our new inflatable kayak (my 50th birthday present!) needed a test run. Would it hold air IN? Would it hold water OUT? Happy to report no tragedies, and lots of paddling fun! Our favorite camping buddy, Miss Kate, and her little dog...
Most people have a passing knowledge of joshua tree plants from the band U2’s famous album cover, The Joshua Tree (back when music was procured via an “LP” instead of a “download”). A glance at that album cover shows one spindly little orphan in the background, but a day-trip to Joshua Tree National Park yielded 792,000 acres of...
It’s not often you can be in a County Park, State Park, and National Park all within the same 24 hours … but we did it, on a recent trip to Tucson, Arizona! With breathtaking sunsets and outdoor recreation galore, we marveled that we had not visited this area before! We had multiple reasons for this trip. One is that we got a new (to us)...
The Lucky Charm’s first 2017 road trip took us to the beautiful shores of Lake Havasu and the Colorado River in Eastern Arizona. Destination: 7th Annual Havasu Balloon Festival and Fair! We knew the Lucky Charm would be close to the action with this trip, but no idea THIS close! During the mass ascensions, balloons lifted of at roughly the same time all over the city...
Being busy with “life” (boooo) since returning from our 7-week Canadian adventure this summer, we hadn’t been camping in two months and were feeling the itch! Safford, Arizona, in the southeastern part of the state filled the bill, with an easy 3-hour drive to Roper Lake State Park. Delightfully stormy weather provided for astonishingly...
After the craziness of the Stampede week, we stayed an extra five days in Calgary. As a Calgarian said to us, “You need to see that we don’t always dress like cheap imitations of rodeo cowboys.” But our real reason was simpler: BIKE TRAILS! Calgary is crazy with bike trails. Everywhere. Hundreds of miles of bike trails...
The Lucky Charm moseyed on over to the 104th Annual Calgary Stampede, billed as the “Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth.” This title had us curious about the Greatest INDOOR Show on Earth, but after investigating a series of brothels and poker lounges, we had to accept that the lowly West Edmonton Shopping Mall had already claimed this title. But...
Ahhh, Banff. A beautiful resort town in the Canadian Rockies, when compared to where we’ve been lately, the “big city” is a little overwhelming! It’s trendy. It’s busy. It’s urban. After having been in (relatively) quiet and desolate places like Jasper, we feel a little like the Unibomber, blinking and...