immediately after dropping off my cake donation, i loaded up the outback and rolled off to the mountains for a little solo mother’s day camping and hiking trip. derek gifted me some car camping gear, to see if that’s preferable to tent camping. for this first attempt, he booked me a hipcamp site near brevard, […]
mountains
elk knob with hiking heather.
for several months (i think), my hiking pal heather has been talking about trying a trail she heard about near boone called elk knob. i’m game for almost any hike, so when she offered to pick me up and chauffeur me to the trailhead, i was glad to oblige. we were a little surprised to […]
a little fall trip to the mountains
we didn’t do a very good job of participating in fall themed activities this year. pumpkin patches and whatnot. but, we did manage to squeeze in a weekend excursion to asheville to get the heck out of winston-salem and see some of the color changing leaves of the mountains. we drove out after school on […]
iceland. day eight.puffins, storurd, dettifoss/selfoss
day eight. we awakened in our little campground on a fjord in east iceland, borgarfjörður eystri, hoping to avenge the previous evening’s failed puffin viewing attempt. we raced over to climb to the little cliff overlook viewing platform and settled in. we had big plans for the rest of the day, so we were hopeful […]
iceland. day three.landmannalaugar (highlands).
our third day in iceland also happened to be derek’s birthday. how did we celebrate? we woke up bright and early (a recurring theme) to catch a bus that would take us into the highlands for a hike in landmannalaugar, aka: a breathtaking spot that is featured in our apple tv screen saver. in order […]
mount lafayette of the white mountains
for our last hurrah in the white mountains and our 2023 summer road trip, anna and i embarked upon the mount lafayette and franconia ridge loop, an 8.6 mile “challenging” trail with 3800+ feet of elevation gain, and three different summits. with several new england hikes under my belt at this point, i knew that […]
mount willard of the white mountains.
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 […]
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 […]