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 […]
wildlife
iceland. day seven.icelandic buffet, hengifoss, long drives

the southern section of the ring road around iceland is packed with lots of things to see and do. as we approached the eastern coast on day seven, and began to make the counterclockwise turn up to the northern section of our trip, the travel times would be longer and the things to do would […]
iceland. day five.vik, black sand beach, lava show

on day five in iceland, we awakened (once again) to gloomy, drizzly skies in the southern port town of vik. this is pretty common in vik though, as it sits just south of a massive glacier and something about the wind and science and meteorology and blah blah. anyways, we bundled up, and made our […]
iceland. day four.waterfalls galore.

prepare yourself for an onslaught of waterfall photos, because the entirety of our fourth day in iceland was spent visiting numerous locations of various volumes of waters cascading over cliffs of assorted heights. some of the waterfalls are iconic iceland attractions, not too far off the beaten path, and with large parking lots and amenities. […]
juney things.

june was a blur. the end of school for all three kids. anna at summer camp. some cakes. lots of work shifts. some sewing. play dates. still the gym. and getting ready to be gone for most of july. here’s what happened, according to the photos i took. (some other stuff probably happened, but i […]
a ridiculously long post about april ’23.

well. you would think a post about april would be super short, considering we spent the first week on spring break, and all of that was detailed in previous posts. but, alas, sometimes when there’s not much excitement going on, these miscellaneous monthly posts get a lot more attention. or so it is in this […]
rocky mountain national park.days four and five. low key. hike free.

our big planned rocky mountain national park event with the grandlidboms was a drive along some of trail ridge road, aka: the highway to the sky. the road crosses (winds) through the park, maxing out at 12,186′ elevation, with breathtaking views in every direction. we fired up one of the guided tour apps and piled […]
rocky mountain national park.day two. emerald lake.

i wasn’t kidding. after our 5.6 or so mile hike to mills lake on our first day, we turned around and hit the trails again on day two. the grandlidboms were set to arrive that night for a couple of days, so i wanted to cram in all the things i could before they were […]
the black hills. custer state park.

when we booked our time in custer, south dakota, i knew it was close to wind cave, badlands, and mount rushmore, but i had only vaguely heard of the black hills. despite its gloomy sounding name, it turns out, the black hills are completely amazing. we got a little taste of them on our drive […]
badlands day.

our site in custer was pretty close to a lot of things, but badlands was still about a two hour drive away. thankfully, we had THE BEST neighbors, who also had a sweet pup, who offered to check in on ruby and take her for a few walks throughout the day, so we were able […]