when the grandlidboms are in town visiting, it gives derek and i an opportunity to do some stuff without kids, a luxury you give up when you adopt a life on the road. since we are both keto-ing pretty hard, we decided to use our alone time to go on a longer hike than would […]
history
“i can’t stand it!”(charles schulz museum)
anyone who knows us, knows that we are pretty big charlie brown and peanuts fans (especially at christmas time). while we were at point reyes, our campground was only an hour from the charles schulz museum in santa rosa, so of course i scheduled a day to take the drive out for a visit. this […]
manzanar and cesar chavez field trips.
when we moved from death valley to lone pine, and started researching things to do in the area, both derek and i were pretty excited about checking out manzanar national historical site. but then we were planning to leave early, so we had to cram it in on the afternoon before we left, after derek […]
death valley days.
we had high hopes for death valley. the drive in was pretty intense. you have to go over two mountain ranges, which is tough on derek driving this billion ton rv. the road and scenery was exactly how you would imagine they would be in a place called death valley. once we met back up […]
tent camping on santa cruz island.part 1.
anna and i love to go on little side tent camping adventures. so, when we were able to figure out a two day trip to santa cruz island, we were super excited. but, we knew it would require a bit more preparation and planning and gear and such. armed with our brand new backpacking packs, […]
whale watching and mission touring.(california adventures with new gramma).
for our big cool adventure while my mom was here, we planned a whale watching trip. derek found a groupon, and even though it was late in the migration season, there were still daily whale sightings and we had high hopes of seeing some cool stuff. look at everyone, all excited for our trip: everything […]
ronald reagan presidential library.
at each new location, we do a lot of research about things to do in the area, and then we plan accordingly, timing the things derek wants to do on the weekends and the things he’s less interested in for our weekday activities. while we were at thornhill broome, the top item on his agenda […]
studies in ancient peoples of northern arizona.
after our long stretch in southern arizona, we moved a little bit north, to cottonwood, giving us plenty of options for new places to explore. within a half an hour, there were two national monuments (tuzigoot and montezuma castle), both of them preserving the ruins of communities of native folks who once called the verde […]
ajo, arizona.
after our camping trip to organ pipe cactus national monument, i was super excited to stop and visit the tiny little town of ajo, arizona, on our way to the next campground. i had read a bit about the politics and economy of the area, but i was most looking forward to all of the […]
fort bowie national monument misadventures.
on the day we went to chiricahua, we had high hopes of maybe swinging by fort bowie national monument, which is in the same neck of the woods. but, we had read that the hike just to get to the visitor center was three miles, round trip. we hiked enough at chiricahua that we were […]