a few weeks ago, my step dad’s sister, karyn, rolled into town for a visit. she was on a two week rv trip with her youngest daughter, her friend, and her friend’s daughter. karyn is quite a bit younger than my step dad, closer to my age, so it’s always fun to refer to her […]
waterfalls
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 […]
glacier. st. marys and virginia falls.

due to a huge increase in the number of visitors (and/or covid), glacier national park had a ticketed entry system in place for access to going to the sun road. the passes could be reserved for a one week window in advance (and i think a certain percentage were sold as a one day pass […]
glacier. going-to-the-sun road.

have i mentioned it was hot in glacier while we were there? like 90s hot. and we were in the many glacier campground, with no hookups and limited generator hours. and since ruby is not allowed on the trails in glacier, we had to leave her in the camper while we were out hiking around. […]
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 […]
my solo camping trip to hanging rock

One day, not so long ago, I determined that I needed a little me time, so I booked a couple of nights at Hanging Rock State Park. I packed up the tent, my new camping love seat, and a hammock that Derek surprised me with for early mother’s day. Also some food and camping supplies, […]
linville falls.

derek didn’t have as much time off during our time in the lenoir and linville area, so i took a few solo trips with the kiddos. one such adventure was to linville falls. this is also a pretty heavily trafficked area, but we went on a weekday and took a more difficult trail than most […]
fall at crabtree falls.

after our trip to the outer banks, we had a one day layover at home, doing laundry and switching out wardrobes, before heading to lenoir for a few days in the mountains. it was peak leaf season, so we wanted to see some beautiful fall color, but we also wanted to balance that with other […]