On a clear day in Tacoma, Mt. Rainier is hard to miss. You walk out of the door or glance in a certain direction, and it takes your breath away. It’s enormous and beautiful and intimidating, and when I unexpectedly had a free afternoon on a work trip to Joint Base Lewis-McChord not too long […]
One of the main things we wanted to do when we drove from DC to California was stop and visit the Grand Canyon. Toby had never seen it, and I was in fourth grade the last time I saw it. But our moving truck arrived earlier than planned, so while we did get to drive […]
Labor Day weekend is just a few days away, and I hope you all have fun plans! AAA is predicting that nearly 35 million Americans will travel more than 50 miles from their house for the holiday — the most for Labor Day weekend since 2008. I know a ton of people hit the beach for […]
My childhood hatred of hiking is well documented. But, as you’ve probably noticed, I’ve gotten past that — and since we were visiting an island that is 75 percent volcano, we thought we should probably visit said volcano. But there was no way in Hades that I was going to ride a bike down that […]
When we were planning our trip to Hawaii, hiking in the rainforest wasn’t really on our radar. We wanted to go up to the top of Haleakala (the volcano) and hike a bit, to scuba dive, to take surf lessons, and to lay around by the pool… and that was about it. Then we went […]
When I was in elementary school (and lived in the Valley of the Sun), my dad had this great idea: We were going to hike a different mountain every weekend. I hated it. So, so much. I think I actually complained enough that we stopped after a few weeks, because who wants to listen to […]