Laura

Soon after we crossed the border from Washington into Oregon, we watched as our plans, as well as our sense of security, went up in smoke.

There's this couple I follow on Instagram who travel fulltime and their entire Instagram feed is just happy pictures of them. They are, according to social media, the happiest people in all the land.

An oft heard complaint these days is it's hard to get away from crowds in the National Parks. Thanks to Facebookers and Instagrammers and bloggers and vloggers and Instagramming-blogger-vloggers all of whom won't stuff a sock in it, just about every big national park is absolutely overrun by hordes of tourons* trying to ride a bison to TikTok glory.

We're nothing if not honest here at C3T HQ. But even a pile of "runner up" pictures from Glacier National Park is still pretty good stuff.

The key to having a great time at Glacier National Park is doing the exact opposite of what everyone tells you to do.

When we made the decision to head out of Austin, it was with two main goals in mind: 1) to escape the Texas heat; and 2) to go somewhere with great hiking trails.

When I started looking at how to route us from Texas up to our summer spots in Idaho and Montana, I broke some of our rules right off the bat. Others, we broke along the way when we realized our plans needed adjusting. Either way, a lot of rules were broken.

I can't remember anything. Ever. At all. Big things, little things, conversations, names, faces, events... all of it disappears quickly. Through the years, I've just relied on various tricks to help me get through life, which brings me to my cell phone.

A good part of this travel project has been about knocking items off our bucket list. This past February we checked another item off our list by attending Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

Our late-winter exit from Florida had a little bit of everything: Beautiful parks, terrible drives, and some nice surprises.