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 […]
mountains
hurricane mountainADK adventure #5

when we woke up to fantastic weather on our last day in the mountains of the adirondacks, i knew we had no other choice but to attempt the hike that we had originally planned for the first day. my pal, andrea, who i had hiked with a few days earlier, told me about hurricane mountain, […]
moms only hike.ADK adventure #3.

as i am sure you know by now, if you are a person who has read about our previous adventures on this blog or my instagram, whenever we are somewhere amazing for a few days, derek always tries to make sure that i have a day to do a longer, more epic hike. it works […]
ausable chasm and whiteface.ADK adventure #2

a long long time ago, when we were just starting to plan our trip to the adirondacks, i mentioned to a road life friend the dates that we would be there and we discovered that she and her family would be there at the same exact time. soooooo, we promptly scheduled an activity together, taking […]
stag brook falls.ADK adventure #1

well. there was a LOT of rain while we were in the northeast. like. record rains. and flooding. it was a mess. we had to plan accordingly and squeeze our outdoor plans into tight windows when the skies cleared up for a minute or two. we had originally planned a bigger hike for day one […]
spring break 2023. wesser bald fire tower hike.

for our first big spring break adventure, we dragged the kids out on a three-ish mile hike to the wesser bald fire tower. it was relatively uneventful. derek wasn’t feeling great and ike was nursing a sprained ankle, so they took their time, while i forged ahead with the girls. we started out a little […]
stone mountain with the best girl.

on one particularly lovely day, it was determined by ruby and i, that we would go up to stone mountain for a hike. we had a fantastic time. the only thing that went wrong was we took a wrong turn at the beginning of the big loop, which meant we ascended mostly via stairs and […]
grandfather mountain hiking adventure.

derek’s parents generously gifted us a weekend at a resort in blowing rock for the last weekend of october. my only request (demand) was that we plan one outdoor activity, and not just end up eating out and shopping the entire time. derek did the research and settled on a hike at grandfather mountain. before […]
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, […]
lenoir camping, etcetera.

we ended up not staying in lenoir for very long. the two weeks in the outer banks preceding it, combined with upcoming halloween and a visit from my parents caused us to cut it a bit short. but, we packed in a few good hikes (previously blogged), took some good drives, and had quality downtime. […]