our second day of spring break was a little drizzly and overcast, so we figured it was a good day to do some shopping and exploring in bryson city. you know, making sure we were close to shelter. but before we hit the city, we drove up “the road to nowhere” to walk through the […]
national parks
camping in the great smokies, sans family.
a long long time ago, derek booked us a long weekend at a campground in the smokies. during prime autumn leaf color season. it was to be our very first family tent camping trip since selling the rv. but then. isaac wanted to go to a homecoming football game. and anna had some sort of […]
some quilty decor for my stupid walls.
you may or may not know two things:1. i hate my stupid house and i have been hesitant to even bother decorating it because it’s so stupid and ugly.2. i have been slowly churning through a series of paper pieced national park blocks, with no real plan for a finished project. i have already blogged […]
atlantic beach week. cape lookout shenanigans.
as previously mentioned, the weather for most of our atlantic beach week was pretty windy. for this reason, the big epic adventure we had planned kept getting postponed. but, finally, on our second to last day, we received word that our adventure was ON! what adventure, you ask? well, two-ish years ago, during a trip […]
new river gorge day five.rafting the upper new with the girls.
on our last day at new river gorge national park, i took hazel and anna on a very chill white water rafting (floating) trip on the upper new river. i had already gone with anna on a slightly more adventurous trip on the lower new earlier in the week, but we had a leftover credit […]
new river gorge day four.grand view, castle rock trail, grist mill
if you’re reading these in real time as i publish them, i’m skipping to day four of our trip because we are still waiting on the professional photos of day three (white water rafting with anna). if not, ignore this disclaimer and maybe i’ll even take it down once i make the day three post. […]
new river gorge day three.white water rafting with the annababy.
for anna and me, the highlight of our west virginia new river gorge national park camping trip was a white water rafting trip on the new river. we were strongly advised not to bring our phones on the trip, so the only photos i have are the professional ones taken by a local photography company, […]
new river gorge day two.cathedral falls, endless wall, the bridge.
for our second day in the new river gorge, we headed north to do some exploring. we had a few things planned around fayetteville, but we took the advice of an instagram friend who said the previous nights torrential downpours would fill up cathedral falls, and took a slight detour to check it out. slight […]
new river gorge day one.sandstone and kate’s falls
we have always wanted to visit new river gorge, but it’s so close that it’s one of those places you just keep putting off until another time. then it became an official national park, so we pushed it up the list, and finally made it happen this summer, basically the minute school ended for the […]
mammoth cave national park.
whelp. here we are. our final destination on the epic (not so) post pandemic summer road trip. after our time in st. louis, we rolled the lidbom rambling road show on over to kentucky, where we had a tour booked at mammoth cave national park. after wind cave and jewel cave, i was anticipating a […]