Category: National Parks

Rafting Team: Dave Miller, Matt Miller, Austin Whitt, Nick Salyers, Marcus Farcus, Josh & Nolan Block, Robbie & Robert Helberg

Date: 1986 & July 9, 2014

I first rafted here with the Spence’s and the Shaeffer’s back in 1986. We wore wetsuits since it was early June and the water was still cold (Photo #5). I am the first person on the far right and Rosie is the third person from the left.

This second adventure 28 years later was a fun trip rafting the New River AKA the “Grand Canyon of the East”. I was between cancer treatment Treatment 5 & 6 so I had enough energy to join Matt and his high school and college friends. We drove the 267 miles in about four hours. After checking in at River Expeditions, we drove and hiked 3.2 miles on Long Point Trail. It ended on a rocky cliff giving us an incredible panoramic view of the New River Gorge Bridge and the river below (Photo#1 & #3). Matt hung back with me as I was a little tired. Marcus and others picked lots of wild red and black berries to eat along the trail. Nick’s girlfriend (second from right in Photo#2) had a hard time keeping up with us on the winding trail. Unexpectantly, we witnessed a massive gun show but none of us were injured (Photo#4). That night we had a campfire and camped out in tents.

We got up early the next day and rode the shuttle bus to the start point. The rapids alternated between calm pools of water and exciting moderate and Class V rapids. I think we lost Austin or Josh one time going through a rough rapid. River Expeditions provided a free deli style lunch along the riverbank half way through the trip. Most of us had fun jumping out of the raft and cruising through the fast current of the swimmers rapids. We also climbed up Jump Rock and jumped 25 back down into the river below. The trip finished as we went under the famous New River Gorge Bridge. We have no photos of the wild rafting trip but afterwards at the lodge we grabbed a brewski and watched a video of our trip filmed by the raft company.

Expedition Team: Dave Miller, Rosie Miller, Jacque Miller, Matt Miller, Holly Miller, Shane Miller

Date: August 2000

While camping at the national park campground we went horseback riding several times through the years. Once at McCarter Riding Stables and this time at Sugarlands Riding Stable. We booked a late morning ride that began at an elevation of 1,200 feet and rose to 1,800 feet. The 3.5 mile ride took about 90 minutes as we slowly ascended through the trees.  We saw some deer but thankfully had no black bear encounters. Our horses had funny names: Dave’s horse was Ginger, Rosie’s was Fred, Jacque’s was Cookie, Matt’s was Pet, Holly’s was Mandy and Shane’s horse was named Sugar. Jacque kept screaming because Matt’s horse, which was in front of her, pooped a lot. The kids always enjoyed riding horses.

Expedition Team: Dave Miller, Rosie Miller, Jacque Miller, Matt Miller, Holly Miller, Shane Miller

Date: 1997, 1998, August 1999, August 2000, 2002, 2004

Smoky Mountain National Park is the most visited national park in the USA with 307 million visits. The Smoky Mountain range rises along the Tennessee and North Carolina border and is known for black bears, waterfalls, hiking trails, wildflowers, autumn colors and the cloudy mists that hang over the higher mountains.  Our family has camped here almost a dozen times through the years. I remember as a 8 year old kid in 1963 as my parents drove through the park, there was trash everywhere along the road as people used to throw their garbage out the car window. Black bears were often seen out by the road rummaging through the garbage. How things have changed. Today the park is clean and beautiful.

As Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg has grown through the years it is a challenge to tow our travel trailer through these two crowded towns. If we are camping multiple days it is fun to drive back into town for a few hours to visit an attraction like the Titantic Museum, Ripley’s Aquarium or drive the go carts.

We camped at Elkmont Campground many times & had a small stream behind our site that we played and swam in. We cooked hot dogs and roasted marshmellows around the campfire. We drove throughout the park and saw some deer, elk and brown bears. We hiked up to Clingman’s Dome and hiked a mile out and back on part of the Appalachian Trail. Later we hiked the Elkmont Campground 1.5 mile trail. At every national park we attended the kids completed there books and hiked to different areas to complete their Junior Ranger assignments (Photo#1).

When leaving the national park on the southeast side we entered Cherokee, North Carolina where we stopped, panned rocks for gold (Photo#7), met some real Indians and had lunch.

Expedition Team: Dave Miller, Matt Miller, Shane Miller

Date: September 2004

Just us boys tried out our new pop up camper that had a slider that gave us more interior room. We drove through Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, Tennessee into the national park. We hiked four miles past Grotto Falls on Trillium Gap Trail. We played in the small ponds by the waterfall looking under hundreds of rocks to catch newts and salamanders with our bare hands. Matt was really good at finding and catching them. Deer always wandered nearby. That night we sat around the warm campfire.

The next morning Matt cooked sausage, spam and pancakes on the indoor grill. We didn’t open any window so it got quite smoky in the camper.

Gatlinburg, Tennessee

Expedition Team: Dave Miller, Rosie Miller, Matt Miller, Breanna Lloyd, Nick Kelly, Jacque Kelly, Holly Miller

Date:  August 2015

The family camped at Elkmont Campground in the pop-up camper and in tents. We hiked three miles up to Rainbow Falls where we played in the water and relaxed before ascending down the trail. We enjoyed a fun time around the campfire. It rained a little that night and water got in one or two of the tents.

Expedition Team: Dave Miller, Shane Miller

Date:  July 1, 2011

Only accessible by seaplane or ferry boat, Dry Tortugas National Park is the USA’s most remote national park and lies 70 miles west of Key West, Florida in the Gulf of Mexico and is the home of Fort Jefferson, a Civil War fort/prison.  We took the National Park service ferry, the Yankee Freedom III (Photo#5), which took about 2 hours 15 minutes to go one way. To kill time, Shane and I lay in the bow of the boat watching the turquoise water and seeing lots of flying fish, several sharks and dolphins.

The park’s main island had just enough land (Photo#6) to hold the old fort, a small dock and a small beach.  Opened in 1860, the fort was considered a strategic point by the Union to control the Straits of Florida and the Gulf during the Civil War. It was used as a military prison and was abandoned by the Army in 1874.  Fort Jefferson is the largest brick masonry structure in the western hemisphere made of 16 million bricks. The fort was planned to be three stories high but the weight of the fort walls and the cannon (Photo#4) started to sink into the ground so the construction was limited to two stories high. The fort was later used as a refueling station. Dry Tortugas NP also contains six other very small islands and the third largest coral barrier reef in the world.

Shane and I had about four hours to explore the fort before the boat headed back to Key West. The National Park staff gave us a tour of the fort, explaining the history, the challenges of yellow fever, lack of food and water and of one special prisoner Dr. Samuel Mudd. Dr. Mudd set the broken leg of John Wiles Booth after Booth assassinated President Abe Lincoln. Mudd pleaded innocence but he was still convicted and he and three other conspirators where imprisoned here. After treating soldiers and prisoners for yellow fever he was pardoned four years later. After the tour Shane and I went to the small beach and snorkeled. We got nice photos of barracuda and an old chain. I returned to the fort and talked to four National park staff who related many paranormal experiences at the fort.  Alone, since every tourist that came on the ferry was on the beach, I walked the dark, quiet halls of the fort talking photos and EFP’s. I captured my best photo ever down one long hallway of a ghost girl in Civil War dress (Photo#1). See my separate post Haunted Fort Jefferson for the full investigation.

Expedition Team: Dave Miller, Rosie Miller, Jacque Miller, Matt Miller, Holly Miller, Shane Miller

Date: July 8, 2003

After traveling across South Dakota and having lunch at the famous Wall Drugs we drove to Badland NP.  We drove the Badlands Loop Road Highway 240 which is a 39 mile road between Wall and Cactus Flats. We stopped numerous times in the park and hiked along trails and land overlooking the colorful layered rock formations, towering spires, deep canyons and scenic outlooks.  It is easy to see how crooks and robbers from the wild west days could allude sheriff’s posse’s by riding their horses into this desolate area.

At the overlooks we saw bison and prairie dogs in the grasslands. Few people know that the Badlands contain one of the world’s richest fossil beds.  We camped at the Badlands/White River KOA campground where we enjoyed horseshoes and made a campfire (Photo#4). The final nostalgic photo my mom took in 1946 visiting the Badlands.

Expedition Team: Dave Miller, Rosie Miller, Jacque Miller, Matt Miller, Holly Miller, Shane Miller

Expedition Date:  December 29, 2003

The airboat ride highlighted our visit to the Everglades NP which is a 1.5 million acre wetlands preserve home to hundreds of species such as turtles, manatees, alligators and the Florida Panther. We crossed State Highway 41 (Alligator Alley) from the Gulf and stopped several times along the two lane road to observe alligators in the creek that ran parallel to the road. Often the gators were on land sunbathing.  At Cooper City we boarded an airboat for the thrilling, fast ride deep into the heart of the Everglades past mangroves, sawgrass marshes and pine flatwoods. The air boat stopped many times to point out birds and alligators but no Florida Skunk Ape sightings. Several gators were spotted in shallow water by cypress trees. The Everglades water was like a grassy, slow moving river, is the largest tropical wilderness in the USA and has the largest mangrove ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere.

After an hour we returned to the dock and took turns getting photographed in the airboat and hold small alligators and large snakes.

Expedition Team: Dave Miller, Rosie Miller, Jacque Miller, Holly Miller, Shane Miller

Date:  August 13 & 14, 2009

These national parks are located in the southern Sierra Nevada range and is home to & notable for its giant sequoia trees.  We drove up a winding road on the edge of the mountain where we saw a small rainbow off to the south. We rented a small wooden cabin in the woods (Photo#2) to stay overnight, the perfect setting for ghost and sasquatch stories.  All day we hiked the trails to see the famous giant trees like the General Sherman, a 2000 year old tree and the largest tree on Earth by volume. It grows in the Giant Forest where five of the ten largest trees in the world grow.

Sequoia NP is contiguous with Kings Canyon NP so we visited two national parks when we drove the Generals Highway into Kings Canyon and hiked to the famous General Grant sequoia tree.  The tree is the second largest tree in the world, is thought to be over 1,650 years old and has the third largest footprint of any living sequoia tree measuring over 107 feet in circumference at ground level. Holly & Jacque pose in front of the 267 feet high Genera Grant tree.

Hiking Team: Dave Miller, Holly Miller 

Hiking Date:  July 2009

Holly and I started up the famous John Muir Trail at the Happy Isles Trailhead in mid-afternoon with no intension of making it all the way up to half dome and back by night.  We wanted to see how far up we could go on this moderate to strenuous trail. We actually ended up hiking up about 2,000 feet in elevation approximately four miles one way (8 miles round trip) or about 50% of the way to half dome before turning around. We began in shaded forest area but the trail would open to a few meadows as we slowly ascended. After a 1,000 foot climb we crested a hill and was on a flat area where we heard our first waterfall, Vernal Falls (Photo#2). This was one of several falls as part of the Merced River. He ascended a hundred or more steep rock steps along a rock cliff that was slow, tough climbing (Photo#3).

We sat on a rock to rest next to the river that ran over the cliff creating a long 317 foot waterfall. Holly fed some squirrels and I read the signs telling people not to wade into the shallow river as many hikers have lost their lives when the current took them right over the falls. The trail took us about 100 yards parallel to the stream and you could see how enticing it would be to waterslide (Photo#4) down the stream (which is called the Silver Apron) except…if you didn’t stop you would plummet over Vernal Falls to your death.  The trail took us back into a semi-wooded area for over a mile we ascended another 900 feet where we could see a beautiful large waterfall off to our right called Nevada Falls (Photo#5) which has a 594 foot waterfall. We went a little farther then turned around to head back. We would like to come back and hike all the way to half dome someday but I am told for safety, it is now a lottery system as they only let so many hikers make the final trek across the dangerous chain railing to the dome. Still this was a memorable hike with great scenery and of course, Holly is a great hiking companion.