in an attempt to spice up our life a little, and not sit around all weekend in this stupid house, we made a semi-spontaneous decision to head to boone with the fam. and then we also made the decision to have me go up a day early to have some alone time without the fam. […]
hiking
spring break (in my late 40s).

my spring break at forsyth tech was a measly four days long and also did not coincide with the girls spring break from public school, so it seemed like another good time to make a dash into the wilderness, for a little solo, camping, hiking, rest, and recharge trip. since it was the first week […]
another stone mountain escapade

after a busy holiday season and then a stupidly snowy january, when the first day of sunshine rolled around (with the kiddos sitting in their desks at school), i hopped in the car and headed to the mountains. stone mountain is a favorite local hike, and it had been closed for a bit of time […]
happy birthday to me. camping/hiking edition.

my little rest and relax trip to virginia over fall break reminded me how much i need some camping/hiking/outdoor/alone time built into my schedule. so, for my birthday weekend, i snagged a campsite at hanging rock, then proceeded to get way ahead on my school work so i could properly enjoy the downtime, and then […]
the random happenings of october

let’s seeee here. it’s february as i’m typing this. i have a lot of fond memories of the month of october. a few bittersweet. but mostly fond. i guess that’s the whole idea of the sweet in the bittersweet, though. anywayyyyzzzz… let me kick things off with an update about school. i wrapped up the […]
whirlwind visit with the jacksons.

in late october, we had a surprise and very whirlwind visit from our road life friends, the jacksons, when they found themselves with some extra time while passing through the area on a long stretch of travel from the northeast to florida. i had already made plans to take a hike to hanging rock that […]
fall break recharge.

so, these days, community college operates on 8-week mini-semesters. i sort of got an explanation about why things are trending that way from derek’s sister who teaches at forsyth tech, but i’m not sure i agree with the reasoning. it’s pretty intense to cram an entire class into 8 weeks, and i definitely felt like […]
labor day hanging rock hike.

i managed to drag two of the other four members of my immediate nuclear family out to hanging rock on a beautiful (slightly warm) labor day for a little hike up to moore’s knob. (we actually made the decision to do the lesser traveled moore’s knob trail instead of hiking to hanging hanging rock when, […]
less exciting random U.P. adventures…

this is the post where i group together some of the less epic things we did while at the keweenaw peninsula. and our travel day. we were trying hard to fill the days but also not make everyone crazy. its a delicate balance for sure. on our second day in the area, i was able […]
local waterfalls and an epic toy store.

full disclosure. at this point in our trip, we were struggling a bit. the upper peninsula wasn’t as epic as we thought it would be. everyone was sort of over it. but. we had some cool things scheduled that couldn’t be moved, so there was nothing to do but stick it out. derek did a […]