Trail head Our State Parks pass is now expired. The trail runs about a half mile from our hotel, but that would mean walking on the road for a half mile then walking back to the hotel. So we drove into town and parked at one of the trail heads. One is at the city park with a 'city bike path' to this one. This one is just a trail head. No play ground or sports fields. It does have parking and an outhouse. In addition to the main trail, this area has paved loops around two pond

3 Floors It's been years since we've been here. An outstate driver had been in a hotel near here so I told them about it and then looked up walking hours. 3 hours before opening. We've been to malls that are as little as a half hour before opening. We hadn't planned ahead so it was close to opening when we got there. And there were already more people there than we see at the average mall. Parking is free. Walking is flat. Weather is good :) We walked for our usual half hour,

Path Only a few days left on our State Park Pass and then we will have to buy a new one. Nice day, parking lots are almost full. Holiday weekends are likely the only time we have seen the lots here fuller. This is the closest park to our house and has a paved trail so it is the one we go to the most often. Snow still on the ski area, skiers still there, ice still on the river below. We only did a short half hour walk today. Most days we get in a good hour walk on the paved tr

Entrance sign No work for the weekend, major snow storm between here and home and at home. So we stayed in the southeast for a few more days. This was one of the closest rural parks. It was about 30 miles from where I had dropped in Charlotte on Friday. No fee. In the AM we did a walk near the welcome center. We did see one butterfly. And later on the walk we saw a few turtles sunning themselves. We walked most of an hour in the AM. The start of some paths were paved but not

Welcome sign We spent most of our time in Charleston sitting in our cabin, watching the ships come and go from the port. Today we decided to go somewhere and this was it. A week plus ago I had taken all my extra cards out of my wallet when we went to the Festival and forgot to put them back. So again, we didn't use our National Parks Pass. We had to pay ... We got there just a a speaker was starting and we stood and listened to them for a while. Interesting. Two of the group

Sign One of the fewer National Parks on the eastern coast. 'Old growth' trees. It is about 30 miles from the town of Columbia SC. We had one day left to kill between working and spending a few days on the ocean coast. This fit into our timeline. The park is free, so we still haven't used our parks pass. It was unusually warm for this time of years so the parking lot was filling up fast. We could have gotten here earlier but we have all day. There are lots of paths but the mai

2 of 2 dozen Our favorite FREE spot in FL. We had gotten work trips to SC with plans on working until we met up with family a week later. There was no work when we dropped so we decided to head to FL to the Strawberry Festival. The festival was yesterday. Today we had gotten work before we left the hotel but the truck didn't need to be picked up until tomorrow so we came here. Lots more cars for a week day. We also found out they now run a shuttle around the park if you sign

Bridge and trail We have now walked this trail a number of times but I seem to have only written it up once before. It is along one side of the Comfort Inn we stay at in Cedar Rapids. There is also a parking area nearby for those that drive to the trail. We have not been taking as long of walks so we didn't walk as far as other times. These days we are walking about a half hour most days when we have the chance to walk. We are on a trip to SC. We left today because we committ

2nd level A mall not like those in MN. There is no Macy's (former Dayton's) or JCPenny's.It is anchored by a Von Maur and Dillard's. Also a Scheels and a movie theater. It is a newer mall, built in 2004, so it is one of the newer malls anywhere and has no real competition in Des Moines. There are no Macy's in IA and it sounds like the JCPenny's no longer has mall entrance to the mall where it is located. This mall has 150 stores so it is larger than the average one we walk at

))) ECHO ? ((( NOTE: THIS IS BEING WRITTEN UP WEEKS LATER. Wow, this mall has changed since we were last here about a year ago. It is now about 90% empty. Penny's and a small Dicks are still there. And the stores facing the parking lot without mall access are still there. At one point I had heard this was going to become an 'ethic mall.' With ethic events and stores. That may have been why the mall was so quiet the day we were there. A lot of minorities are staying home to av

Rare store vacancy. NOTE: THIS IS BEING WRITTEN UP ONE MONTH LATER. On the right is where, I am assuming, Forever 21 used to be. It's not a vacant store front, it is closed off with art. The only other large vacancy is the half of Sears that Best Buy is not using. But that is committed to and is being worked on. Other than that it is a full and busy mall. Busy ... we did one lap and my wife was done. Too crowded. Christmas in January. It's been below zero up here for days, ma

Smaller mall. NOTE: THIS IS BEING WRITTEN UP ONE MONTH LATER. When this mall was built, it had a Sears and a White Drug. So this never was a big mall. We can see this mall from our hotel and I've seen it many times from the other hotel's we have stayed at here in town. Now it looks like a former mall that is gradually selling off parts of the building to businesses who want the location but do not want to be part of the mall. Their doors only face the parking lot, not the mal

Open area at the mall NOTE: THIS IS BEING WRITTEN UP ONE MONTH LATER. It is the dead of winter, temps are below zero, snow on the ground. The mall is the only place to walk. There are two malls in this town, this one is further away from our hotel and looked more active online so we decided to do this one today. We were there during 'walking hours' before the stores open.Lots of people walking. Just lay your coats on a chair, on the floor, it's ND, no one will bother then. St

There are a few people here NOTE: THIS IS BEING WRITTEN UP ONE MONTH LATER. When the weather is too far below freezing we try to get out to a mall and walk. Some years we are better at it than others. Not so much this year. Part of what we notice when walking the malls is not just how full/vacant they are, but also the store fronts. This mall looked to be 80+% full, and and the store fronts are updated. Updated, as in the store front matches the current store. There are not j

Groomed path NOTE: THIS IS BEING WRITTEN UP FOUR MONTHS LATER. We had spent the night in Truth or Consequences. My wife found this free park a few miles away. Paved parking lot, the trail along the river is a real trail. Not paved, but six foot wide with surface rock on it. Once we decided to turn around, there the trail was actually the old paved driveway. This area used to be a fish hatchery. There are still some buildings, good repair, and some fish ponds, being used by wi

No tall, tall trees. NOTE: THIS IS BEING WRITTEN UP FOUR MONTHS LATER. Most National Parks are closed because of the shut down. Not this one, not here anyway. There is nothing to shut down. My wife had found two ways to get to this park. We drove to her first choice, until it led passed a gate down someones driveway. At the 2nd one we had to park on the end of the street (we did ask a neighbor there) Then we either had to climb through a pipe fence or walk around the fence on

As close as we got to Mexico. NOTE: THIS IS BEING WRITTEN UP FOUR MONTHS LATER. One more walk before heading back to our hotel for the night. We got this close walking, to the MX border. You can't see it on this picture but the fence is there, before the hills and the building. The border fence here was built back in 1993, 30 plus years ago. Not sure why, but for most of our walk there is a ridge of dirt piled up that we were walking on. It was much firmer than trying to walk

Closed, enforced NOTE: THIS IS BEING WRITTEN UP FOUR MONTHS LATER. We had been to the adjacent Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery a dozen times. And we'd been here to the Visitors Center a few times but never too walk. Not sure what those reasons were, I know one time it was raining, other times we might have just been short of time. But today we were going to walk it. We thought. Sign said otherwise. So back to the cemetery we went, parked and took pictures of graves I likely

Close up to the seals. NOTE: THIS IS BEING WRITTEN UP FOUR MONTHS LATER. Our grandson had found this location on TikTok when we were out here a few months ago. We decided it was a good free place to stop and walk. Last time we saw a mother seal who had just given birth. We didn't see anything like that this time but we did see a lot more seals near the one shown above. Last time we had walked in that area, this time we stayed on the sidewalk above. This picture was taken befo

John Denver memorial NOTE: THIS IS BEING WRITTEN UP FOUR MONTHS LATER. One of our more frequent stops in California. It's only a couple of hours from where I pick up the buses in Livermore. The first time we stopped here we did not know that the memorial was here. Then the rock was closer to the water but a major storm came through and either the storm moved it or someone decided it would be good to move it. The first time we saw it, it was like this. On later stops in the ol