i think most people would agree that january is the most blah month ever. the holidays are over. it’s still cold and gray. there’s nothing exciting to look forward to for a really long time. and it seems like it lasts for like 75 days. such was the case for this january around here in […]
derek
november twentytwentyone.

i seriously can’t believe it’s already december. this year has flown by. between my virtual teaching fiasco, preparing for and taking a long summer road trip, and the chaos of adjusting to two kids in school, i feel like i blinked and 11 months have gone by. anyhoooo. here’s a recap of all things november. […]
giving thanks in batavia.not so much in buffalo.

when we put the older two kids in school, we knew it would mean that we would have to give up our vacation scheduling freedom, and that we would have to work around the school schedule. fortunately, for some reason, they had off the entire week of thanksgiving, so we didn’t have to cram in […]
autumn leafy mountain day

on a beautiful, sunshiny, october day, we packed up the fam and headed down the road to blowing rock, to partake in a little colorful autumn leaf admiration. our first stop was an overlook on the blue ridge parkway, where we hopped out to take a few pics and check out the scenery. from there, […]
august mayhem.

well. our epic summer road trip had to come to a close eventually, and we rolled back up to the stupid new house in early/mid-august. we had originally planned to spend a bit more time on the road, but as covid cases began to turn the midwest red, we scooted through that area a little […]
post-RMNP miscellany.

when i was going through my photos for all of the fifty something posts about our summer road trip, and trying to organize them into reasonably sized clumps for blog posts, i ended up with a few homeless photos that i didn’t want to leave out. so, here’s a bit of miscellany from our speedy […]
mammoth cave national park.

whelp. here we are. our final destination on the epic (not so) post pandemic summer road trip. after our time in st. louis, we rolled the lidbom rambling road show on over to kentucky, where we had a tour booked at mammoth cave national park. after wind cave and jewel cave, i was anticipating a […]
STL non-arch themed happenings.(us grant, farmers market, city museum).

our last day in st. louis was a saturday, so derek was able to join us as we crammed in as much as we possibly could. (he took a lot of days off for the big things, but usually had to work while we did the smaller monuments and such). we started off with a […]
gateway arch *cough* national park *cough*

the lidboms are adamantly opposed to the gateway arch’s recent upgrade to national park status. we think its a national monument at best. but that didn’t stop us from planning a visit while we were passing through st. louis. the museum and visitor center is pretty impressive. and like a fortress. we had to go […]
rocky mountain national park.days four and five. low key. hike free.

our big planned rocky mountain national park event with the grandlidboms was a drive along some of trail ridge road, aka: the highway to the sky. the road crosses (winds) through the park, maxing out at 12,186′ elevation, with breathtaking views in every direction. we fired up one of the guided tour apps and piled […]