Healthy Lifestyle and Travel
The Blue Ridge Parkway is a scenic 469-mile winding road from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee. We traveled on the top ridge of the mountains as we drove the southern end of the Parkway. The road twisted and turned and each new vista […]
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Are you planning a long road trip to your favorite destination? We have a few tips we have learned on how to make traveling more fun. 1. Planning for the Road Trip If you have read other posts on this blog, you know that we advocate for traveling slow through the countryside. The challenge with […]
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A Cove is known as a relatively flat valley between mountains or ridges. Cades Cove is in the southern part of the Appalachian Mountain Range and also part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Cades Cove is an 11-mile, one-way loop that winds in the valley where wild life and an old community history […]
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You’re off to great places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so… get on your way! ~ Dr. Seuess
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We did it! Our first bear sighting in the wild occurred and it did not happen when we were hiking. We will always remember the Smoky Mountains for this reason. Our sighting happened when we were safely in Alice! We had just finished our hike in the rain at Rainbow Falls and the sun had […]
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After spending several days in the Great Smoky Mountains we were looking forward to driving from the mountains to Asheville, NC on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I had been on the Blue Ridge Parkway in northern Virginia growing up so being back on this parkway was very special. We stopped to take a picture by […]
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The highest elevation in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is Clingmans Dome standing at 6,643 feet above sea level. This peak straddles two states and is the tallest peak in Tennessee and the third tallest peak in North Carolina. Clingmans Dome is also the highest peak on the 2,174 mile Appalachian Trail that runs […]
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When we started our Van Life By Design website and blog, our mission was to write about and photograph our travels in our Sprinter van Alice and other travel related topics. This is still true. Gail is also interested in writing about exercise and fitness, healthy eating and other lifestyle topics so we have launched […]
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We visited the Great Smoky Mountain National Park recently when the forest in the lower elevations of the mountains was coming to life. The week we were there, the renewed plant life in the forest introduced me to more shades of green than I had ever seen in one place. It’s interesting what one notices […]
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During a family trip to the Florida panhandle, we happened to pick a week when the weather was less than ideal for hanging out at the beach. For this reason, we began to seek out places to visit in the area with our grandkids where the rain would not hamper our fun. One day, we […]
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The Van Life culture is a growing movement that lures in people of all ages and income levels. The free spirit mindset that this lifestyle embraces is an indicator that people want freedom and simplicity in their lives. The inevitable question everyone asks is, “how can we do this”? There are many things to consider […]
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Unlike anywhere else in Kansas that I know of, the Monument Rocks are chalk towers that rise imposingly from the otherwise flat prairie. Located about 25 miles south of Oakley on Highway 83 and a few miles east on a gravel road, the formations sit on private land. The public is welcome to visit the […]
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One thing Gail and I have learned during our travels of the United States is how rich the country is with interesting and unusual places to visit. Some of our destinations are cultural stops that highlight the vision, the creativity and the expansion movements of the country and its people. Other places highlight mother nature’s […]
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