My Eagle scout friend Jody (whose ceremony I attended nearly 30 years ago) planned a family camping trip to Cloudland Canyon State Park in northwest GA for his birthday weekend, so being a good friend, I invited myself (plus my 3 children, wife, and dog) to join. We enjoyed it […]
We saw the film “Muscle Shoals” earlier in the summer and decided we needed to go, much like we did with Yosemite after “Free Solo” last summer. On Friday of Labor Day weekend, we headed west on I-20 to Alabama. We pulled off I-65 in Cullman to see something I’d […]
I haven’t flown on a non-Delta aircraft in over a decade, but when a travel newsletter I get said American had round-trip flights to Chicago for $49 a few months ago, I bought 5 for the weekend of Sept. 11. Why that date and that city? In 1997, I graduated […]
I have a National Parks bucket list, and hiking The Narrows and Angels Landing at Zion National Park have been near the top of said list for at least as long as there’s been an Instagram. We concluded our tour of the Utah National Parks with visiting my most anticipated […]
I’ve had some amazing experiences at the 33 U.S. National Parks I’ve visited: rock climbing in Yosemite, biking through snow above the Grand Canyon, paddling under snakes at Congaree, hearing a ceremonial flute serenade at Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde. At Bryce Canyon, however, I had 2 experiences that rival […]
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 […]
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 […]
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), […]