there’s a zillion hikes in the white mountain wilderness. but a lot of them are no joke. long. steep. brutal. but, derek researched and discovered mount willard, a popular hike that gives a great bang for your buck. it’s only about three miles out and back, with 900′ elevation gain. and, i sound like a […]
lake
2023 summer road trip. week one. batavia.

summer in north carolina is super dumb. hot. humid. and dumb. this year, we escaped much of said dumbness by heading north for most of july. our first stop on the road trip took us to my homeland of batavia, new york. we piled into the subaru, which feels smaller and smaller each summer, but […]
august in western new york.

usually, we head up to western new york for our annual summer pilgrimage in june or maybe early july. but this year, my baby brother’s wedding was set to take place in august, so we planned our excursion around the wedding date. we arrived the weekend before the wedding, so we could get in some […]
glacier. iceberg lake with anna.the last hurrah.

on our very last day at glacier national park, anna and i ditched the rest of the lidkids and drove back up to the many glacier part of the park, to hike to iceberg lake. we had a couple of different hikes in mind, but grinnell glacier wasn’t fully open and the highline trail presented […]
glacier. two medicine.

with our going to the sun road pass having expired, we were basically locked out of the main part of glacier national park for our last two days. this was actually a blessing in disguise, because i’m not sure we would have made the trek down to the two medicine area otherwise. we had no […]
glacier. cracker lake.my ultimate bucket list hike.

every since i first laid eyes on a photo from cracker lake in glacier national park, i knew i would someday have to make the journey. when we were here four years ago and i had to opportunity for a longer, solo hike, i wasn’t sure i was good enough shape for the 13 mile, […]
glacier. swiftcurrent lake.

after our “longest hike ever” to red rock falls and bullhead lake the previous day, we decided to take it easy on our second day in glacier. (i also maybe made this promise many times during the grumbling yesterday). for this easy day, we chose a 2.5 mile hike around swiftcurrent lake, which is mostly […]
glacier. redrock falls, and more.

finally! the moment we’ve all been waiting for. or, well, the week that i’ve been waiting for. GLACIER NATIONAL PARK!! when we were planning this summer road trip, the idea was to hit a lot of the places we missed during our 3+ years on the road. but, since glacier national park is pretty much […]
twin cities, partially explored.

our next stop on our epic (not so)post pandemic summer road trip was the greater minneapolis-saint paul metropolis, where we had four days booked, with big plans to do lots of things. but, on our way in, some of the same brake issues from the way out of chicago resurfaced, so we would end up […]
devils lake state park

when we realized we had a two day layover in wisconsin in our schedule, i reached out to some friends we met on the road who have recently settled in the area, to see if they wanted to meet up and/or if they had any hot tips for things to do. they answered yes and […]