This post is way overdue and out of chronological order, but I never blogged about the state high points we knocked off this summer! Besides my successful summit of Oregon’s Mt. Hood paired with Justin’s not-so-sucessful second attempt to summit Hood, we checked off 3 more high points, bringing us to a grand total of 43/50!…
Currently living/working in: We are back to caretaking Fenton Ranch in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico and teaching kids (5th, 4th & 2nd graders) environmental education! The fall session of teaching will run through mid-October, while the caretaking role will be all winter. Current mood: Really excited to be settled down again for a bit and…
I turned 39 today at 3:37am EST. And while I truly stand by the fact that age is just a number, I have a hard time believing this will be my last year in my 30s! Birthdays are one of those days I’d rather just ignore and treat as another day, but that does not…
Over the years, we’ve spent A LOT of time in Colorado, but only I had been to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. And in our quest to visit all 59 of the national parks, it doesn’t count until we’ve been there together! We finally visited it together last weekend, making it number 42.…
Dates: May 1- July 25 Distance Traveled: 14,240 miles *12,328 miles on the Superfeet Van *1,912 miles on our own car ***Our friend Alexis put together this REALLY AWESOME video of the Superfeet van. Check it out on our YouTube channel. Gracias Alexis!*** Longest Drive: 922 miles on 7/23/17 from Moorehead, MN to…
Our summer nationwide speaking tour truly culminated when we turned the Sprinter van back over to Superfeet, which conveniently happened while we were at Outdoor Retailer in Salt Lake City. Outdoor Retailer. Let me take this opportunity to write an ode to OR. When people ask us what this semi-annual trade show is all about,…
Currently living/working in: Just last week, we reluctantly turned over the keys to the Superfeet Supervan! As for our living situation going forward, we’ll be in Denver through mid August, then head back to New Mexico to teach environmental education for our fourth session at Fenton Ranch. Current mood: Post-trail blues … our epic summer adventure…
After our backpacking trip in Michigan, we continued to hug the Canadian line to drive into Minnesota. Another national park lies in this far-reaching section of America: Voyageurs National Park. Voyageurs is a HUGE park, something like 200,000 acres. It has 3 (maybe even 4?) visitor centers/entrances. We knew we wouldn’t be able to spend…
There’s a reason Isle Royale National Park is the least visited park in the lower 48. It has nothing to do with its beauty. It has to do with the fact that it is WAAAAAAAAAAAY up north in the middle of nowhere. Allow us to entertain you with details about our 45.3-mile backpacking trip across…
We’re making our way West after 3 very full weeks on the East Coast. We only had 5 events in the East, but if you’ve been reading my previous posts, you’d already know our road trip was more about seeing the people. Not all the people we could possibly see, but many of the people.…
If it seems like we are doing more visiting than presenting these days, you hit the nail on the head. We’ve definitely slowed down on presentations as we are hitting the tail end of the tour. And it sure feels like we are just going from one friend’s house to the next. Believe it or…
We spent the long holiday weekend in the tristate area. Most of my family lives here, so there were PLENTY of people to visit, and we still can never see everyone. We started with Connecticut, where my older sister lives. We purposely planned a presentation near her and her family … they were not at…
From New York, we traveled back to one of our many homes: New Hampshire. We lived in NH from 2007-2011. And really, it’s the last place we “lived.” My definition of “home” has certainly changed over the past few years, but NH was certainly the last place we lived for any length of time. Plus,…
If I waited to do an entire East Coast tour recap, it would be way too long with too many visits and happenings since we are on the East side for 3 weeks. So you get a few separate recaps. When planning the tour, this latter end became a bit of an agenda because of…
Currently living/working in: The Superfeet Supervan!!! Only 6 stops left on our NZ speaking tour and 4 weeks!! Current mood: I’m a little overwhelmed these days. Road life is blissfully chaotic and though we stay on top of most of it, being disconnected and on the go poses challenges. Road life is equally carefree, so…
Just in case you are wondering, it is NOT recommended to drive eastbound and jump 2 time zones in 2 days. I spent most of my last week jet lagged without ever stepping foot on a plane. This is because we drove nearly 2500 miles across the United States in a week for our NZ…
Once again, we realized we could take a “short” side trip, “not too far out of our way” on our drive from Vegas to Salt Lake City. So we visited Great Basin National Park in Eastern Nevada! Great Basin is now our 7th national park of this summer’s road trip. We certainly did not see…
Are you tired of hearing about California??? This is it … the last post with a quick recap of our New Zealand Speaking Tour stops, I promise. When we were planning our tour—which has been primarily West Coast-based—we debated how many stops to do in California. Do you guys realize how big of a state…
As I said in my last post, we hit 2 national parks in northern California and 2 in southern California. A visit to Pinnacles National Park was last minute when we noticed that it was “not too far out of our way” on our drive from San Jose to Fresno in between events. We cut…
California has SO many national parks, and even though we’ve been to many, we have not visited all of them. For this summer’s road trip, we made a point to hit Redwoods, Lassen Volcanic, Pinnacle AND Channel Islands National Parks (in that order, but spread across 2 weeks). I’ll spare you the overload and break…