for spring break this year, we packed up and headed to an airbnb, in the wilderness of the nantahala national forest, on the tippy western end of north carolina. as the children grow, so does the volume of our “luggage” (reusable shopping bags, mostly), making packing the back of the subaru feel like the most […]
dining
vance. freaking. joy.
so. i am a big fan of vance joy, a singer-songwriter from australia, whose music our family fell in love with while were on the road. i sort of never thought i would have the opportunity to see him live. i mean. he was mostly in australia, not SUPER famous, and when we were on […]
february. the 24th month of covid.
whelp. february is a wrap. concluding the 24th month of covid. or. two years if we are counting in years, which if you had told me we would have in march 2020, i might have had a nervous breakdown. anyways. enough about that. you know about that. here’s the happenings around these parts, in no […]
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 […]
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 […]
black elk peak hike.
turns out, that lovely ranger from yesterday was right, and the skies cleared up and the sun came out, and anna and i woke up to a picture perfect day for a hike to black elk peak. so, once again, we geared up and packed up and headed to the trailhead bright and early (the […]
chicago. day two.sky high views, co-worker hot dogs, bean.
our second day in chicago was another looooong one. we kicked things off with a race against the clock to make it to our scheduled time for a trip to the top of the chicago 360 tower. between driving in downtown chicago, parking in the weird spiral parking garage, getting isaac situated in an allowed […]
chicago. day one.an old house, a museum, inside out pizza.
our drive from indiana dunes to chicago wasn’t all that far, but it was pretty stressful, as most folks who have driven in chicago traffic will attest. we parked the rv in a parking lot and then piled into the car to rush over to our first activity, a scheduled tour of the robie house, […]
indiana dunes miscellany.
we booked four days at indiana dunes, which may have been excessive, but worked out nicely in the end. the campground was pretty nice and actually had showers, so we timed one for our arrival and one before we departed for a few days of boondocking. our campsite was spacious and amongst a zillion ferns. […]