Right before December concluded, we flew down to St. Thomas, exited the American Airlines 737, walked a few paces across the tarmac, showed some locals our negative Covid test results on my wife’s phone, and entered the Cyril E. King airport. We’d escaped the continental United States for the first […]
U.S. National Parks
Zion National Park
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 […]
Bryce Canyon National Park during Covid-19
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 […]
Socially Distant Utah at Capitol Reef National Park
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 […]
Socially Distant Utah, from Canyonlands to Capitol Reef
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 […]
Socially Distant Utah, starting with Moab
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 […]
Climbing Yosemite (with kids)!
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), […]
a roadtrip through Greenville, SC to Asheville, NC
Months ago, we realized Columbus Day weekend meant the children had a few days out of school and that it coincided with my mother-in-law’s 70th birthday, and she wanted her daughters and their families to get together somewhere for a weekend of fun, but we also realized we’d miss seeing […]
4 National Parks in northern California
We left San Francisco and headed south to one of our county’s newest National Parks, Pinnacles. Pinnacles is small in terms of acreage but offers some great hiking trails and rock climbing. It’s also home to endangered condors and bats, among other wildlife, and the trails offer views over the […]
glamping in the Smokies
We spent last weekend in a giant tent with a bed, hardwood floors, a shower, and a bathroom next to Great Smoky Mountains National Park; the children were in a much smaller teepee (called a “hive”) 20 feet away. This was how my bride wished to spend the weekend following […]