Lovely! I am drawn to the log cabin photo.

Beautiful! And I am sucker for wooden bridges.

This is so true! They all have their own special vistas. I also find on top of the fact that every one is unique, I tend to sometimes rank them in my head along with certain fond memories. Bad lands for instance. We went the summer after our horrific car accident. Our eldest son had just completed a bunch of physical therapy and could walk with a cane, albeit not long distances. We asked him where he wanted to go for family vacation, and he picked Badlands, MinuteMan Missile, and Devil's Tower. Seeing him able to walk and able to enjoy the trip, having him alive and with us, probably informs a lot of how I feel about that park. Here are two photos I took at New River Gorge.

Here are two photos from our quick stop at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument in Nebraska. I am making a plug here because I sincerely believe that the park ranger we met there might be the loneliest park ranger in America! He practically rolled out the red carpet to welcome us in. It is one of the least visited park units, I think average number of visitors is 11,000 ish. It is in the middle of absolute nowhere. The most remote outpost I have ever been to so if you have a chance to go there in your travels, do say hi to the poor man, shake his hand, and if you dare, ask him questions because he will give you all the facts! If you head north out of there and go to Custer State Park in South Dakota, you will not be disappointed and can consider it a reward for going out of your way to visit the lonely outpost. 😁 The 3rd photo is off our back deck at the Alabama house overlooking the cove.

Agreed! In light of everything going on in the world, this a balm for my soul.

Marching bands here, floats, fire engines, tractors, more marching bands, a 57 chevy or something like that carrying parade/occasion "royalty", sheriff posse on horseback, and more marching bands.

I love this! 😍

Wow! I want to visit that lighthouse.

Lovely! So serene. Lake Michigan is my happy place...shhhh....don't tell Lake Huron that. She is pretty too! 😁

I have been through Utah back in '88 traveling for work but did not get a chance to stop. The NPs there are more bucket list items.

You were in some of my favorite country! Love it.

I will start. There are 432 National Park Service Units, probably more after the first of the year because a few new ones will be added. Potomac Heritage NST, George Washington MEM PKWY Manassas NBP, New River Gorge NP Gettysburg NMP, Independence NHP, Lincoln Memorial National Mall and Memorial Parks, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Washington Monument, Russell Cave NM, Canaveral NS Everglades NP, Cumberland Gap NHP, Mammoth Cave NP Natchez Trace NST, Natchez NHP, Natchez Trace Parkway Blue Ridge Parkway, Great Smoky Mountains NP, Indiana Dunes NP Keweenaw NHP, Pictured Rocks NL, River Raisin NBP, Sleeping Bear Dunes NL Agate Fossil Beds, NM, Dayton Aviation Heritage NHP Rocky Mountain NP, Bad lands NP, Minuteman Missile NHS, Mount Rushmore N MEM, Devils Tower NM, Grand Teton NP, Yellowstone NP Lewis and Clark NM&Pres, Mount Ranier NP Of all of these, Sleeping Bear Dunes, Pictured Rocks, Keweenaw, New River Gorge, Badlands, Blue Ridge Parkway, Great Smoky Mountains, and Minuteman Missle are my favorites thus far. Minuteman probably seems like a weird choice. But, my father was a Minuteman missile engineer in the Air Force so seeing that site was very special. Honorary mentions of Great Smoky Mountains and Dayton Aviation Heritage. On the bucket list in the next three years, Glacier NP, Voyageurs NP, Isle Royal NP, and Theodore Roosevelt, NP. When Mark retires, he wants to take me on a road trip through the Southwest to California. He lived in Cali as a kid and has visited a ton of the NP's there, but I have never been. On the east coast, Acadia is one we want to visit.

One of the bucket list trips Mark and I have for when he retires is to drive Shenandoah National Park in autumn and drive the Blue Ridge Parkway all the way. We were in a piece of that highway this summer in North Carolina on vacation and fell in love with it.

I did a thing today. I got up just as the coffee pot was finishing up, and poured both my own coffee as well as Mark's, and delivered it to him. I smiled and was mentally engaged. He said he wanted to know what morning loving alien had replaced my body. 😂

Gorgeous! I have to say I do love the vast array of scenery and natural resources of the US, and I am thankful for our National Park, National Forest, Bureau of Grasslands, and State Park systems that maintain such amazing vistas for everyone.

I find that really disturbing. I feel like social media has just ruined our culture. People care more about being followed, liked, commented on by strangers than about how they behave and treat members of their immediate community.

Michigan welcomes you with open arms! And so am always available to give advice on best places to see, routes to take, etc.

Thanks for the heads up! When we go to the Alabama house, I am always looking for new places to take my eldest grandson and romp around. He is almost 8 now so he can really go places now.

If you came, I would take you on a tour! Also, more bragging photos. Photo 1, 2, & 3: Lake Michigan, Charlevoix County, Tunnel of Trees scenic drive Photo 4: The Mighty Mac. We used to cross it, round trip so 16 crossings, 8 times a year for 4 straight years while youngest ds went to college in the U.P. apart from the insane driving conditions on US 2 and MI 28 during the dead of winter, I always loved making the run. Total, believe it or not, it was cheaper to do all that driving than buy, insure, and maintain a car on campus. I actually loved doing it. Mark made the trip about 4 times in that span. Mostly it fell to me because I had a lot more flexibility in my fine arts director job than he had in his IT job.

Photo 1: Presque Isle Park, Marquette MI Photo 2: Sailing on Lake Huron Photo 3: Sleeping Bear Dunes, Lake Michigan

I would also like to say that there is a close 2nd place. We lived for 18 months in Newburg, OR at the base of Mt. Hood. We were in wine and rose country, and an easy drive to coast for seeing seals and such. Lots of orchards. The Willamette Valley is pretty dang amazing. Astoria is gorgeous. The east side of the state is deserty, but also has some interesting landscape. We did love it there, very much. We lived for years in Indiana, and sadly, we just don't have those kinds of things to say about that state, or Illinois, or Iowa, or Nebraska, or Kansas.....

Well, as a Great Lakes Girl, I can say I have never seen a state better than Michigan for general beauty being all over that state. Sure, I have been to spectacular spots in individual states, however, these were one off, two off type places where the rest of the state was rather less pretty. I am hard pressed to drive anywhere in this state that isn't beautiful. And when you grow up on lakes the size of seas, it isn't impressive really to go hang out on an ocean. My sister in law tries to get us to say that the Tampa Bay is just drop dead gorgeous, but I have Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Superior handy, and no sharks, no stinging jellyfish, and deciduous trees plus pines lining the coast way, plus mana dunes, cliffs, rocky coastlines, mountains just high enough for winter sports, and glorious summers where we rarely bake in intense heat. So ya. I love this state!!! But, that said, I kind of think this thread could start a bit of a rumble. 😂

I was raised to be one, especially with a big religious "God looking over your shoulder" scare/guilt trip. I put up with some pretty awful things because of the rules. Now that I am no longer religious, I find that common sense, and rationality intervene. I follow a lot of the rules, probably the vast majority, but I also bust some of the ones that are just wrong, the rules for the protection of abusers, narcissists, violations of human dignity. If I had a child in PS, they would have the meds they need on their person even if they had to be hidden a pez dispenser or something. Our schools don't even have school nurses anymore. Kids with life threatening allergies can't carry their epi pens, and those pens are kept locked in offices so far away from many of the locations kids can be on campus that they could easily kill a child not getting the med there in time. So you can bet your boots my attitude towards the school would be ,"Kiss my @".

People have watched Bruce Willis movies as though they are documentaries. Sigh. No. John McLain does not save the day. The neighbor is not Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. But, my nephew "a responsible gun owner" managed to accidentally discharge his firearm while cleaning it, narrowly missing (literally by an inch) his pregnant wife and 6 year old daughter. This is the more likely scenario than "good guy civilian with a gun takes out the bad guy".

Well, I read this and thought of this thread. I think Mark and I can have a party to celebrate NOT being this mom! https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/27/europe/mum-evicts-sons-court-italy-intl-scli/index.html