The Slippery Slope of SCOBIES.

I never envisioned my life to include caring deeply about a giant slab of living snot. But here we are. Not only do I have one pet giant slab of living snot, but I actually have five adorable pets. And I do care for them very deeply. A SCOBY is the stuff of my children’s […]

What the Pinhoti.

Guest Post by Chris the Husband. There we were, the five of us, unlikely comrades in an unlikely place – a dry-heaving, lost, and injured party – with one unlikely hero to save us all. ****** 12 Hours Earlier: I stood at the start line in the early dark. It wasn’t very cold – 60 […]

An Unexpected Detour To The Grand Canyon.

My plan was always to save the Grand Canyon for an epic trip – when I had time to plan it, time to fully process and prepare to hike down in it, or take a helicopter ride above it, or all of the above. But once we realized that it was more or less in […]

Saguaro National Park.

Saguaro National Park. It’s a tiny little spit of land – or actually two spits – one hugging each side of Tucson like strangers in the airport that insist on sitting right next to you, despite the luggage barrier you tried to create. We’d not planned on going to it, as aforementioned, but when one […]

Making Travel Lemonade on the Fly.

We’ve had a solid run of unsurprising air travel. On time flights. Made connections. Baggage arriving with us. Nobody in the family has used an air sickness bag. Yet. But we pushed our luck a little too far scheduling a trip to the high desert in peak winter. In our defense, we thought it was […]

Colorado Days Three and Four – Snow, Elevation, and Trains.

The third day of our Colorado trip was the day Noah had been waiting for: Rocky Mountain National Park. The kid is in the middle of a serious love affair with National Parks, so it didn’t matter how cool horseback riding was (or whether he’d admit it or not) – what he wanted was national […]

Colorado Days One and Two: Anaphylaxis, Hiking and Horses.

In Mid-October, The week after I turned forty, the children and I flew to Colorado. It was rather a last minute trip, taken because I was desperate to get out of town, there was a great deal on flights and that I was able to combine with several other tricks to make the trip incredibly […]

Montana and Yellowstone: When the Consolation Prize is Better.

“Do you know why I wanted to come to Montana?” “Nope. Why?” “I read about it in a novel and it sounded amazing.” “That is the EXACT reason I went to Maine last year!” I was thrilled that Ali and I are equally inspired by literature in our desire to see the world. Fernweh, Chris […]

The Dark Side of the Island.

Chris and I are on our 20th anniversary trip. We are at Jekyll Island, Georgia, an island with a dark and mysterious past, many dark and mysterious rainforest-like trails, and going with the theme, everything seems to have a delightful dark side. This island was owned in its entirety in the early 1900’s by a […]

Birdlet, The Overly Friendly Woodland Animal.

Yesterday as we were leaving a hike at Ross Bridge, there was an extraordinarily tiny bird hopping after Luke, one of my kid’s friends, as he got in the car to leave. I found the bird’s actions strange, and Ross Bridge Parkway is a busy place for a strange bird, so we got out of […]