Our visit to the north portion of Death Valley National Park included a tour of the historic Scotty’s Castle and a 4×4 drive to Eureka Dunes. We enjoyed the solitude and beauty of the sand dunes as we explored them and camped there at night.
The last portion of the trip to Death Valley was spent in some of the most remote parts of the national park. We visited The Racetrack, exploring the rocks that move across the dry lake bed. After a beautiful drive through Hidden Valley, we spent the night on Hunter Mountain.
Traveling across the USA by train is an unique way to see and experience the variety and scale of the country. We broke up the journey, stretching it into a 17 day trip in August / September 2004, by stopping at Glacier National Park for five days and visiting Chicago before reaching New York City.
To begin this cross country journey, we went north by train to Oregon, where we had to resort to taking a replacement bus to meet our connecting train that left Portland before we were due to arrive. Once on the next train east, we made our way toward Glacier National Park.
The first few days of our time in Glacier National Park were spent on the west side of the continental divide. Here we enjoyed our lakeside hotel room, drove along scenic roads and took several day hikes to beautiful lakes.
The east side of Glacier National Park was no less spectacular than the west side. We continued our day hikes in the area and stayed in one of the historic lodges. A day trip to Waterton National Park in Alberta, Canada was a highlight.
After spending time in national parks, arriving in a big city like Chicago was a big change. During the three days we spent here we visited several museums and saw a Chicago Cubs baseball game.
New York City was our final destination on the Trans USA train journey. Here we visited a variety of locations in the city, including the United Nations, Brooklyn Bridge, Greenwich Village and Central Park.
Lima was our first stop on our three week journey to Peru. We spent time there both at the beginning and the end of our trip. Much of our time was spent walking around the large city and seeing the numerous plazas and cathedrals.
We flew to Cuzco from Lima and spent a day there touring the Sacred Valley before going to the Amazon Basin. After that trip, we returned to Cuzco to use it as a base for our trip to Machu Picchu. On both occaisions we enjoyed the beautiful and historic city.
