Death Valley National Park is known for being remote and harsh. We took a 4×4 vehicle trip in April 2006 that packed in many of the iconic sights of Death Valley with 270 miles of off-road travel to the most remote and varied parts of the park.
We spent the first day of our 4×4 off-road trip through Death Valley National Park in the south side of the park. After visiting Saratoga Springs, we joined the main road to see Artists Palette, Badwater from Dante’s Peak and Zabriskie Point.
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.
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.
This was no ordinary vacation; instead our Cosmos (around the world) journey with our kids was a lifestyle change that lasted over four months, from September 2003 to January 2004.
One of the highlights of the entire trip was the visit to the Amazon Basin, which was a short flight from Cuzco to the gateway city of Puerto Maldonado. Once there, we boarded a boat for a journey up an Amazon tributary for a total of eight hours to a research center.
Our time in Machu Picchu consisted of a day trip from Cuzco. After the early morning four hour train trip, we spent several hours at the site, viewng it from above, as well as walking through the various structures of the lost city.
