Category: Terrain
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Skyline Drive – North District
Skyline Drive hugs the crest of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains for 105 miles (169 kilometres), down the length of Shenandoah National Park. I’ve traveled every section of it, in whole or in part several times, as recently as 2022. So it felt like I rejoined an old friend as we undertook a day-trip from our…
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Interior Alaska, Part 7 (Richardson Highway & More)
Next we explored the one remaining direction outward from Fairbanks that we hadn’t seen before, heading towards the southeast on the Richardson Highway. This day-trip took us about a hundred miles down to Delta Junction, where we turned around and came back. I’ll describe points of interest along the route sequentially starting from Fairbanks. In…
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Interior Alaska, Part 6 (Dalton Highway)
We made it to Coldfoot by airplane and now we started the long drive back to Fairbanks. It seemed daunting. Most of it would follow the Dalton Highway starting at Mile 175 (route), with the remainder on the Elliott Highway. The James W. Dalton Highway is a rugged working road, built in 1974 specifically to…
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Interior Alaska, Part 5 (Coldfoot)
I’ve always wanted to travel north of the Arctic Circle. I came pretty close to it in Iceland but even there I fell a few degrees short. So this was a major objective of the latest journey. My wife got her half-marathon in Fairbanks, I got my arctic visit, and we both shared our bucket…
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Ontario, Day 5 (Lake and Caves)
As I planned the trip, I tried to intersperse mellow days with active days and most of the time I followed those guidelines. Originally Day 5 was designed as something low-key in Collingwood without any driving. However, plans shifted a tiny bit and we did more than we anticipated. Hen and Chicken Island I ducked…
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Ontario, Day 2 (Downtime)
Well, we made it to Canada and we decided to settle down for our first full day. I promised the family I’d take it easier and try to avoid over-scheduling them for once. But I’m not someone who can ever stop moving entirely so “easier” meant no activities further away than an hour. Plus, anyone…
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Inland Northwest, Day 6 (County-Centric)
We were now between race days again, with two races down and one more to go. So we could do pretty much whatever we wanted now and I decided to focus on some county counting. It was all virgin territory to me and I intended to cover as much of it as I could during…
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Inland Northwest, Day 5 (University Loop)
This was another early morning start although not as early as some of the others. We wouldn’t need to drive very far anymore now that we’d settled into our temporary home in Lewiston, Idaho for four nights in a row. The Washington Race Sunrise came quickly and we soon found ourselves running another half-marathon. Thankfully…
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Inland Northwest, Day 3 (Let the Races Begin)
The main reason we went to the Inland Northwest was to run some races. It also became an excuse to experience a part of the country I hadn’t explored much. Either way, the first of the races was finally about to begin. The Oregon Race We walked through the dark to a park along the…
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Inland Northwest, Day 1 (Staging)
Was there a name for that largely empty space beyond Washington’s Cascades Range and into the Idaho Panhandle? A little research suggested the Inland Northwest, or perhaps a now lesser-used designation, the Inland Empire (not to be confused with a similarly named area of California). Anyway, that’s where I traveled for a few days on…