more NEW bucket list updates

Happy Monday! In my book, it’s a pretty great week when I can mark off items from two different bucket lists. Today I’m updating my National Parks bucket list and my 100 Waterfalls bucket list! Woohoo!

Recently, we visited Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio. What a unique national park! It’s basically in the middle of some towns and very close to a large city – Cleveland, Ohio. It was made a national park because the beauty of the area was being threatened by development. We rode our bikes on the Erie-Ohio tow path, then made our way to this awesome waterfall. I’ve wanted to go here ever since Nancy at Two Trails One Road recommended it! It did not disappoint! Thanks, Nancy! We rode further on the tow path and saw this awesome bridge. I believe it’s called Station Road Bridge:

After lunch, we hiked to Blue Hen Falls. However, after visiting Brandywine Falls, these falls were a bit underwhelming (especially after a semi-difficult hike), but hey, any waterfall is worth it in my opinion! I’m thinking perhaps there might be more water in the spring rather than the hot days of August!

On the drive back to our campground, we stopped in the cute little town of Chagrin Falls. We bought an ice cream cone and enjoyed their falls right in their downtown.

Toward the end of the week, we hiked the short distance to Minnehaha Falls and Cascade Falls in Nelson-Kennedy Ledges State Park. The Minnehaha Falls has a glass bridge that you can walk over the large gorge that the waterfall flows through. Again, I’m thinking there would likely be more water in the springtime than there was in August. But I’m counting them both toward my 100 waterfalls!

So, the bucket list stats are at 29 out of 63 national parks and 68 out of 100 waterfalls. We’re getting there. Being retired will likely speed up the progress!

Have a great day! I hope you learn or do something NEW today!

NEW photos of Iguazu Falls

Happy Wednesday!

My bucket list dream of visiting Iguazu Falls has been successfully checked off! Woot Woot!

Therefore, I’m updating my 100 Waterfalls Bucket Lists. We recently flew to Santiago, Chile and boarded a cruise ship in San Antonio, Chile. The itinerary was Puerto Montt, scenic cruising near Amalia Glacier, Punta Arenas, Chile, Ushuaia, Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina, scenic cruising around Cape Horn, Port Stanley, Falkland Islands, Puerto Madryn, Argentina, Montevideo, Uruguay, and Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was an awesome trip! Here are some NEW photos:

We saw more than just Iguazu Falls, so I’ll try to post again very soon.

Have a great day and I hope you learn or do something NEW today!

NEW challenges for the NEW year..and what I’m into lately

Happy NEW year! (How can it be Jan 10th already!?!)

I don’t particularly do “resolutions” but I do like a good challenge. It makes things fun. So here are my 2025 challenges:

Reading challenges:

Read at least 52 books

Read 12 books in the 12 different time periods suggested at “When Are Your Reading Challenge)

Read all books by a certain author (I think my best shot at doing this is reading all of Susan Meissner’s books).

Travel challenges:

I already have my travel challenges ongoing. Visiting 100 waterfalls and all of the National Parks. We’ll be doing quite a bit of traveling this year, so I’m sure it will be easy to add to these lists, but here are a few marked for this year:

Visit Acadia NP, New River Gorge NP, Indiana Dunes NP, Cuyahoga Valley NP, Shenandoah NP and Gateway Arch NP.

And of course, visiting Iguazu Falls is happening this year. Yay!

Physical challenges:

Do another (or multiple) 30-day steps challenge (might be easy as we’re hiking to waterfalls!).

Do a 30-day yoga challenge

Ride on 20 (NEW-to-you) bike trails.

And lastly, what am I into???

Junk journals and art journals! I LOVE looking on Pinterest at creative art journals and watching videos about making junk journals. I’ve got one of each started (one art journal and one junk journal). My plan is for the junk journal to be vintage looking and I’ll be answering questions from a book my son gave me a few years ago called, “Tell me your story, MOM”. The art journal will be more vibrant and I will do some decoupage, watercolor, digital art, and other types of art. I created all of the images in this post with AI (Midjourney). I will use the image above as a focal point in one of my collages. That might seem like cheating, but anything goes in my journals, haha!

That’s it for my 2025 plans. My interests might change next week and I might be into something totally NEW and different! I’ll let you know. Maybe sometime I should do a blogging challenge and try to update this site a bit more regularly, haha! Anyway, I hope you have a fantastic day and that you get to learn or do something NEW today! Take care!

Updated Bucket Lists (Waterfalls & National Parks)

Happy Monday!

It’s update time! I get to cross Glacier National Park off our National Parks bucket list and add multiple waterfalls to my 100 Waterfalls Bucket List.

We visited Glacier National Park last week. We were thrilled to see the northern lights while we were there! We had a terrific time hiking and biking, eating huckleberry pie, huckleberry ice cream and huckleberry bear claw pastries! The weather in the 60s was perfect hiking weather. It was an excellent week!

I officially added 3 waterfalls to my waterfall bucket list, but we saw multiple random waterfalls. For instance, while driving on Going to the Sun Road, we saw water pouring over rocks several times.

Here’s my official three:

Baring Falls:

St Mary Falls (someone needs to remove that random log that obstructs the view, right! :o):

And here’s Virginia Falls:

I’ll post more photos of the beautiful scenery of Glacier National Park in the next few days.

Here’s the updated NP list. 26 down, 37 to go!

LIST OF US NATIONAL PARKS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER (63 total)

  • Acadia National Park {done}
  • Arches National Park {done}
  • Badlands National Park
  • Big Bend National Park
  • Biscayne National Park {done}
  • Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park {done}
  • Bryce Canyon National Park {done}
  • Canyonlands National Park {done}
  • Capitol Reef National Park {done}
  • Carlsbad Caverns National Park
  • Channel Islands National Park
  • Congaree National Park
  • Crater Lake National Park
  • Cuyahoga Valley National Park
  • Death Valley National Park {done}
  • Denali National Park and Preserve
  • Dry Tortugas National Park
  • Everglades National Park {done}
  • Gates of the Arctic National Park
  • Gateway Arch National Park 
  • Glacier National Park {done}
  • Glacier Bay National Park
  • Grand Canyon National Park {done}
  • Grand Teton National Park {done}
  • Great Basin National Park {done}
  • Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve
  • Great Smoky Mountains National Park {done}
  • Guadalupe Mountains National Park
  • Haleakala National Park
  • Hawaii Volcanoes National Park {done}
  • Hot Springs National Park
  • Indiana Dunes National Park
  • Isle Royale National Park
  • Joshua Tree National Park {done}
  • Katmai National Park and Preserve
  • Kenai Fjords National Park
  • Kings Canyon National Park {done}
  • Kobuk Valley National Park
  • Lake Clark National Park
  • Lassen Volcanic National Park {done}
  • Mammoth Cave National Park
  • Mesa Verde National Park {done}
  • Mount Rainier National Park
  • National Park of American Samoa
  • New River Gorge National Park 
  • North Cascades National Park
  • Olympic National Park
  • Petrified Forest National Park
  • Pinnacles National Park
  • Redwood National Park {done}
  • Rocky Mountain National Park {done}
  • Saguaro National Park {done}
  • Sequoia National Park {done}
  • Shenandoah National Park
  • Theodore Roosevelt National Park
  • Virgin Islands National Park
  • Voyageurs National Park
  • White Sands National Park 
  • Wind Cave National Park
  • Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve
  • Yellowstone National Park {done}
  • Yosemite National Park {done}
  • Zion National Park {done}

Have a great day! I hope you do or learn something NEW today!

Miscellaneous Monday…NEW stuff i gotta share

Happy Monday! It’s high time I posted (cuz it’s been over a month!) Yikes! I remember thinking if I paid for WordPress instead of having ads on my site, that would lead me to post regularly…to make it “worth” it! How’s that working for me?? I clearly need to be more intentional!

Nevertheless, here I am, and here’s some miscellany to share:

We had a family get-together and rode ATVs to this beautiful waterfall. So I’ll update my 100 Waterfall Bucket List!

Speaking of waterfalls…my ultimate bucket list waterfall to see is Iguazu Falls, and it WILL happen! We’ve booked our trip for early next year! I’m SO excited. Here are some Google images of Iguazu Falls:

Even more exciting is that I’m finally a Grandma! Yay! I haven’t asked permission to post any photos, so that will have to wait.

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately. And when I say “reading” I mean mostly listening to (on commutes to work)! My yearly GoodReads challenge is 75 books and I’m on track to reach that challenge. I’ve read some really good books this year. I’ve never really wanted to read everything from any particular author before, but I’ve decided I’ll read all of Susan Meissner’s books. Wish me luck…there are about 30. If I get tired of them, I’ll abandon that idea! :o)

That’s probably enough miscellany for now. The other stuff is too boring to share (the depressing process of getting decking bids…why is trex decking SO expensive?!) Travel planning is fun, but it’s hard to wait…I just wanna GO GO GO! The fires are making air quality not great. But I’m loving the beautiful summer flowers everywhere! I think I’ll go for a bike ride and enjoy the lovely yards in my area.

Have a great day! I hope you do or learn something NEW today!

a NEW update to my waterfall bucket list

Happy Friday!

A few weeks ago, we traveled to Colorado and hiked to a few waterfalls. So, I’m updating my 100 Waterfall Bucket List. I’m up to 58. Lesson learned though: Don’t go in May if you want to hike to more waterfalls, because there’s still too much snow. Many of the trails were closed. Bummer!

The photo above is Cascade Falls in Ouray, Colorado. Below is Box Cañon Falls, in Ouray.

Over the mountain from Ouray is Telluride, Colorado. That’s where we planned to do more hiking, but at least we could see Bridal Veil Falls from afar.

We enjoyed these dramatic clouds while we traveled to our son and DIL’s graduation.

That’s it for today’s photo dump. :o)

I hope you have a terrific day and do or learn something NEW!

another NEW waterfall collage

Happy Wednesday!

I just realized I didn’t post many waterfall photos from last year’s North Carolina trip. I really liked my recent CA waterfall chase trip collage, so I thought I’d belatedly make one for NC. Here we go:

Top left: High Falls, Dupont State Forest, North Carolina

Top middle: Soco Falls, North Carolina

Top right: Juneywhank Falls, North Carolina

Middle left: Linville Falls, North Carolina

Middle second from left: Tom Branch Falls, North Carolina

Middle third from left: Mingo Falls, North Carolina

Middle far right: Upper Linville Falls, North Carolina

Bottom left: Indian Creek Falls, North Carolina {

Bottom middle: Triple Falls, Dupont State Forest, North Carolina

Bottom right: Pearson’s Falls, Polk County, North Carolina

Have a terrific day! I hope you do or learn something NEW today!

a NEW collage of our most recent waterfall chase

Happy Saturday!

I thought I’d better hurry and post all the waterfalls we saw on our recent trip to northern California before I forgot the names or can’t remember which were which in my photo stash. So here goes:

Top left: Burney Falls, (#51 on my Waterfalls Bucket List)

Top middle: Potem Falls (#50)

Top left of top right quad group: Lower McCloud Falls. (#52)

Top right of top right quad group: Upper McCloud Falls (#52)

Lower left of top right quad group: Lower Kings Creek Falls (#54)

Lower right, top right quad group: Hedge Creek Falls (#53)

Lower left: Whiskeytown Falls: (#55)

Lower middle, top of double group: Crystal Creek Falls (#56)

Lower middle, bottom of double group: Upper Kings Creek Falls (#54)

Lower right: Middle McCloud Falls (#52)

Have a terrific day! I hope you do or learn something NEW!

a NEW favorite waterfall

Happy Tuesday!

We returned home from a fun trip where we chased a bunch of waterfalls, rode e-bikes, and hiked and hiked and hiked! So, I need to update my Waterfalls Bucket List. I believe I’ve found my NEW favorite waterfall. Burney Falls in Shasta County, California was amazing! Here are some more views from the trees as we walked down to it, and then hiked up the other side of the creek.

And here’s a longer shot of the area.

We hiked to 7 different waterfalls on our trip. I’ll try to show the other photos in upcoming posts. I debated counting more than 7 because a few had lower falls, then we hiked to the middle falls and then to upper falls, but I guess I’ll just count one falls per creek. I’m at 56 out of my bucket list of 100! Many more to go!

Have a great day. I hope you do or learn something NEW today!

another NEW bucket list update…my waterfall bucket list this time

Happy Tuesday! What?! Posting two days in a row? Amazing, haha!

Well, after updating my National Parks bucket list yesterday, I had to also update my 100 Waterfalls bucket list today. While at Grand Teton National Park, we hiked around Jenny Lake and up to this wonderful waterfall. It’s called Hidden Falls. We could’ve taken a boat across the lake and then up to these falls, but we opted to hike around the lake. It was beautiful and peaceful.

There’s something about bucket lists that make crossing off items so much fun! If I haven’t forgotten any, this is my 49th waterfall visit. 51 to go until I retire this particular bucket list.

It was fun to visit this NEW (to me) waterfall. Have a great day and I hope you learn or do something NEW today too!