Travel date: June 16, 2018 We left off with our extended family scattered all over New England: Dave, his mom, and the younger kids were still on Cape Cod, and Ari, Dave’s dad, and I were in western Mass visiting Amherst and Williams colleges. But we were all reunited in Quechee, Vermont, where we made […]
Lassen Volcanic National Park: Hey, What Do You Know? Even MORE Volcanoes!
Travel dates: July 1, 2017 The party line on Lassen Volcanic National Park is that it’s a hidden gem–an amazing but underappreciated spot where one can go to soak up natural wonders while escaping the crowds. Lassen Peak itself is a huge plug dome volcano which erupted most recently in 1915. The park is one […]
Believe the Hype: Crater Lake is Really, Really Blue
Travel date: June 28, 2017 At Crater Lake National Park, in very late June, we encountered the most snow any of us had ever seen in one place in our lives. We were looking forward to doing a boat tour of Crater Lake. Maybe hiking Wizard Island, the small island in the middle of the […]
Two Days in the Tetons: Visiting Grand Teton National Park
Travel dates: June 21-23, 2017 I think a lot of people view a visit to Grand Teton National Park the same way we did: as something you really might as well do when you’re already so close, visiting Yellowstone. And then, like us, they get there and realize that, not only is Grand Teton a beautiful, […]
Things to Do with Kids in and around Gainesville, GA
travel dates: October 6-9, 2017 As I mentioned in my campground review of Don Carter State Park, some bad weather cut our trip to the Gainesville area down to one full day from a planned two, so we didn’t get to everything on our list. But we did fit a good bit into our one day […]
Mountain View Campground Review: More Mountain Time!
Travel dates: September 22-24, 2017 Since we kind of have a theme going on here, how about one more fun in the mountains kind of post before I get back to talking about the summer trip (which will also soon become very mountainous)? As those who pay attention to my whining will recall, our trailer […]
Dahlonega and Amicalola Falls State Park: a Day in the North Georgia Mountains
A terrible thing happened to us a few weeks ago: we had to cancel our planned Labor Day trip to the Smoky Mountains because our trailer was still in the shop. (Now it’s home! We headed out with it this weekend!) Terrible might be an overstatement, but we were disappointed. So we decided to devote one day of […]
Great Smoky Mountains Trip, Part 1: Inside the Park
We’re only 3-4 hours from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, depending on which part we’re trying to get to, so I feel like it really ought to be our National Park….yet this was only the second time we managed to make it there as a family. The first time was only a year ago, […]
The Breakwater in Provincetown + Old Harbor Life Saving Station + Highland Light: More Cape Cod
Back when I was in grad school, Dave and I and a few friends randomly decided to go to Provincetown, MA one weekend….in January. There was still snow on the ground from a recent storm, but the actual days we were there were unseasonably warm. This was back before my obsessive planning phase, and one […]
A Few Days in Vogel State Park, Blairsville, GA: Campground Review
Not to get too political, but I love it when Big Government sends hundreds of thousands of unemployed young men off to build state parks for me and my family to enjoy eighty years later. Vogel State Park, on the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains and about two hours north of Atlanta, is the […]