after our stay in an unofficial 55+ community in mesa and hearing about how arizona is just chock full of snowbirds in the winter, i wasn’t super excited to head to benson, arizona. i was expected all the retirees to be grumpy about kids being in “their” park, and benson isn’t near a whole lot […]
swimming
antelope island with some fave friends.

we have been extra excited about our time in salt lake city, because we had coordinated with a fellow fulltime traveling family to meet up for a day. we met them in florida on our “trial run” and then ran into them again, in january, also in florida. we follow each others adventures and check […]
quincy, washington.

like our previous two weeks in newport, washington, our time in quincy was pretty low key and chill. we took this little four week detour to give southern utah a bit of time to cool off before we make our way down. and the two campgrounds were in our thousand trail network, making them free […]
glacier national park.avalanche and hidden lake hikes

when the weekend rolled around, our only question was which hikes we would do on which days. we had three that we for sure wanted to do, so we started with the longest one first, avalanche lake. it would clock in at around 5 miles, the longest our kiddos have attempted. we got an early […]
glacier national park. week 1.friend hikes and the best junior ranger program ever.

after our weekend of exploring glacier by car and boat, i was very excited to do some hiking. but, a lot of the hikes were too long to do with the kids. and the ones that weren’t, we wanted to save for the weekend to do with derek. also, we had moved the camper 4 […]
glacier national park.going-to-the-sun rd. and lake mcdonald

so, after the four days of full hookups, laundry, cleaning, and regular bathing, we headed north to glacier national park. we arrived on friday (and thankfully/surprisingly got a campsite, which i will detail later) and got busy exploring on saturday. glacier happens to boast one of the most beautiful scenic drives in the country, the […]
grand tetons.mormon row, death canyon, string lake 2.0

welcome to part two of my grand teton adventures blog. i’m going to cram in a lot, so get ready. without further ado… we kicked off our tuesday (at 1:30pm) with a trip to mormon row. it’s a little abandoned settlement that sits on the national park property and has some old barns that make […]
big bend. hot springs canyon.

warning. this post is at least 50% pictures of anna posing with beautiful landscapes… so, in my last post, i said that the kids wanted to go back to the hot springs. i managed to convince anna to hike there with me this time, instead of drive to the quick little path. she could earn […]
big bend. hot springs.

on friday, derek had to actually work for his actual employer, so i had to find an activity i could handle on my own with the lidkids. we decided that i would leave hazel (to watch movies, play ipad, and generally continue to recover a bit from being sick) and take the older lidkids to […]
big bend. santa elena canyon.

due to slow internet, travel days, and an untimely round of the stomach bug (is there ever really a timely round?), i’ve fallen behind on my big bend posts. allow me to take you back to last thursday. after a day off from exciting expeditions, mostly due to hazel being sick, we were back at […]