We visited the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where Wilbur and Orville Wright achieved the first successful powered airplane flights.
We drove along about 140 miles of the 444-mile Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. A weird park barely wider than the road, with thousands of years of history.
Though we drove both ways on that portion, so a total of about 280 miles, plus some detours, over two days.
We also drove past Elvis Presley’s birthplace and Tupelo National Battlefield, and visited Meriwether Lewis National Monument.
A first for us: we visited Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho with our coach on a travel day. We parked our coach at the visitor center, unhooked our truck, and drove around the park, plus walked around a bit.
Visitor center:
Relief map; the red circle lights show the moving magma hot spot that is currently under Yellowstone:
It has some RV parking, which barely fits us, so we were able to visit on a travel day — a first for us:
We unhooked our truck, and drove around the park (see a forthcoming post about that):
When we got back, the RV parking was full:
Onward on US-20:
Arco, Idaho, the first city in the world to be lit by atomic power:
We made an unplanned stop at a rest area, to take a break from unnervingly high wind gusts:
Peaks:
Fuel stop:
We had to wait for a long time due to an inconsiderate truck driver that had parked and gone inside; the convention at truck stops is after fueling you can pull forward and stop for up to 15 minutes, but this driver was gone much longer than that:
The Redwood National and State Parks is interesting, in that it is jointly managed by the National Park Service and the state of California. Their headquarters are in Crescent City, with a small book store (not a gift store, thank you):
We visited several of the component parks, starting with the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, which includes a fun scenic drive through the redwoods:
