I grew up in upstate New York. We have bears sure, but not grizzlies, not in large quantities, and never do you hear of bear attacks up this way. Our bears are all very people shy and stay very much out of sight and out of the way. (Except for the occasional bear strolling into […]

From Grand Teton National Park to the South Entrance of Yellowstone only takes about an hour. But what I didn’t know until a few days in advance, was that Yellowstone National Park is massive. It takes HOURS to get places simply because of distance! (Not counting traffic.) So plan for a lot of driving in Yellowstone. […]

It’s decided. I’m a mountain goat through and through. I love the beach, the desert, canyons, prairies and rolling farmlands. But there’s some kind of other emotion I feel when I’m in the depths of the mountains. The canvas of greens and greys, the height, the depth, the tranquility, the feeling of being small… I don’t […]

Salt Lake City. The plan was to visit the Great Salt Lake, the salt flats, dad wanted to visit the Mormon temple/capital building/historical center of the city, and Alissa wanted to visit East High School – filming spot of High School Musical. Sadly, because of all the nearby wildfires, the entire area was set under […]

From Bryce we had a 6 hour drive to the Salt Lake City area. Knowing this we’d planned a drive day ending with a short and sweet 4.5 mile hike roundtrip to Diamond Fork hot springs. (Also known as Fifth Water Creek)   When visiting places I sometimes try to look up “off the beaten […]

We arrived midafternoon and drove to the amphitheater area to take in the view. It’s not a huge area, but definitely impressive. Because most of the group had sore legs and feet from the previous day’s hikes, we decided to only take a short hike and did the Navajo loop. It takes you down into […]

Angel’s Landing: From first hand experiences and research, we knew we wanted try to be on the first shuttles into Zion National Park and get an early start on Angel’s Landing. That meant we got up at 4:30am, got to the park at 5, packed lunches and then got in the shuttle line at 5:30. […]

Thanks to Covid making traveling a little lackluster, and not being able to take time off work, it’s been a while since I went somewhere. I saw a two week gap where I would be able to snag time away from work, but unfortunately I had to ditch the hubby on this one. We’ll go somewhere […]

Destination Caribbean! My brother-in-law wanted to do a 30th birthday extravaganza with his family and friends, so the trip to Curaçao was born. It was actually planned at the same time as our Asia trip, but I didn’t help do any of the planning we just came along for the adventure.       Getting […]

Getting There: From Don Phi Phi we again took a ferry over to Phuket. We had arranged for our Airbnb host to pick us up from the dock so someone was waiting for us on the other end. It was about a 40 minute ride from the docks to our house.       Where […]