We awoke at Capitol Reef, Utah’s least visited of its 5 national parks, and had a lousy breakfast at Pioneer Kitchen before going by the visitor center for junior ranger workbooks and hiking the 2.25-miles-each-way Grand Wash trail in the bottom of a canyon with 800′ sandstone walls. It was […]
We stopped at Lin Ottinger’s Moab Rock Shop on our way out of Moab, where we saw dinosaur fossils and gems from all over the world strewn about dusty shelves both inside and outside the store. A Japanese man interviewed the elderly shop owner as a lighting crew and cinematographer […]
We flew into Salt Lake City on July 4 and headed south to Arches National Park early on the 5th, bunking in Moab at the Gonzo Inn. We stopped by the park for junior ranger booklets and to pull over at a spot that allowed me to take a photograph […]
When you can’t fly across an ocean, you seek recreation in more pedestrian pursuits, so this Spring and Summer, we’ve gone camping more than we did in the prior 10 years combined. A friend from undergrad named Charles invited my family to join his at Stone Mountain’s campgrounds, so we […]
Unlike every other family I know, we don’t really take “beach vacations.” Before our Little Raccoon Key weekend, we hadn’t taken a non-work-conference beach trip since we met family in Cape Cod in July 2011. Since we’ve had 27 Delta flights cancelled for The Sickness, however, short trips to the […]
I submitted my application to retire from the Air Force Reserves on January 12, during my training weekend at Dobbins Air Reserve Base. I knew that on May 13, I’d meet my 4-year commitment to pass on my post-9/11 GI Bill benefits to the children, and that on May 16, […]
After we returned from our trip to the northern California national parks last summer, we spoke with a representative from the National Parks channel on Roku about creating a short film from our footage while hiking and climbing at Yosemite. Now that we’ve been back for a bit (10 months), […]
We needed to leave our house for Mother’s Day weekend. We were supposed to be at Disneyland with our newly minted 10-year-old after the Mom 2.0 Summit in L.A., but those plans were made before the sickness started, of course. I burned a couple hundred thousand Amex points and a […]
Summer 1995, I went to Lackland Air Force Base, Texas for 4 weeks of “Field Training,” which is like Basic Training, but for kids who are in ROTC. I was on a 4-year Air Force ROTC scholarship, and now I had to pay my pittance: we’d get hazed instructed by […]
My 13-year-old named our makeshift Spring Break trip to Saluda, NC Friday afternoon with the above moniker, as the Governor of Georgia signed an order on Thursday saying our entire state had to “shelter in place” starting at 6pm Friday evening. At 3:15pm, we drove for 3 hours without stopping, […]