Dadcation
We concluded our best travel year ever with one of our best trips: Australia and New Zealand for 3 weeks! Here are December’s 31 seconds; I’ll supplement with more photos and info on the trip later on… And, here is all of 2023’s “one second every day” compilation video !
July started with camping out on our land by the Little Tallapoosa River in Alabama for the holiday weekend, including time on Lake Wedowee. A few days later, we picked up our son from camp and went out on Lake Lanier with friends before driving up to Nashville for a legal conference for a few days before all 3 children went off to camp for 2 weeks (we did our first family “escape room” experience before they left) on the eldest’s 17th birthday. The Mrs. and I flew…
In October, I had 5 work-related trips that we did our best to turn into fun. One was to Portland, Maine, so I hit my 43rd U.S. National Park–Acadia ! We started in Myrtle Beach, flew to Phoenix, then drove to Jekyll Island, GA, and then flew to Baha Mar in the Bahamas before flying to Maine. In between, we saw Smashing Pumpkins with Jane’s Addiction and Death Cab for Cutie concerts, and I participated in my first group ride with the American Legion Riders, which was awesome….
October featured our 10th “high on the dog” photo of the children at Gnat’s Landing at Saint Simons Island, some shooting, some fishing, some biking, some fine dining, and our 10th consecutive coordinated family Halloween costume.
In September, we camped out at Oak Mountain State Park near Birmingham, celebrated my bride’s birthday in Austin, watched horses race at Churchill Downs in Louisville, and enjoyed nearly a week at The Breakers in West Palm Beach for a legal conference. I’m gonna miss it.
August. We went back to school and continued with Zoom meetings, yes, but we also dived Loch Low-Minn, kayaked the Hiwassee, mountain biked in north GA, threw axes, starting rucking, and saw our first concert in…forever! Here it is in 31 seconds:
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 time in 2020. The next day, we took at cab to the airport to pick up our rental car and headed to Magens Bay, which has been rated as one of the top beaches in the world. It…
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 of the 5: Zion. We arrived in the evening and parked by a deer-filled lawn before checking into the Zion National Park Lodge, where I recommend staying at any time, but during Covid-19, I highly recommend it, as…
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 the best of the best. Like Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon is an international dark sky park (it got the designation in 2019). Fittingly, one of the ranger-led activities one can choose is a guided constellation tour, so we…
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 hot as Hell in July, but it included cool graffiti from the 1800s where folks in covered wagons carved their names into the rock, but you can’t add your own, because there are cameras and signs telling you…