When I was in college, my roommate Suzanne and I took a road trip up to Washington, DC and back. My memory on this might be completely wrong, but I feel like this involved driving the entire length of the Blue Ridge Parkway AND Skyline Drive. In the Chevy Cavalier I’d inherited from my grandmother, […]
Mammoth Cave Weekend: Spring Break, Part 1
We actually had a trip to Asheville, NC all booked for spring break. Campground booked, list of places we wanted to see all planned out. We’ve passed through Asheville and stopped there briefly before, but never spent any significant time there. Then I started to get a little nervous about planning a trip that involved […]
Red Top Mountain State Park and Campground Review; or Continuation of Remains of Industry Tour: THWARTED!
As regular readers will recall, we are, it seems, on a quest to become experts on the history of the iron industry in the Southeastern United States. Or, anyway, we saw a lot of iron-related sites on our recent trip to Birmingham. And we happen to have a state park nearby that hosts an iron […]
Birmingham, Alabama: The Remains of Industry Tour, Part 2
When we left off, we had just finished our first day in Birmingham with a visit to an old quarry, and we were all set to see more industrial relics the next day. But first up on Sunday, we checked out Oak Mountain State Park, a large state park about 20 miles south of Birmingham. […]
Birmingham, Alabama with Kids: The Remains of Industry Tour
There’s something very….American about a city founded with the express purpose of becoming an industrial giant. Birmingham (named, confidently, for the industrial city in England) was founded in 1871 at the site of a planned railroad crossing in an area rich with iron, coal, and limestone–the three materials which, it just so happens, are the […]
52 Hikes in a Year
One time, several years ago, I decided to do a 52 books in a year challenge. I didn’t read 52 books that year. But I DID read way more books than I would have otherwise. Which is not nothing. So. I don’t know that we’ll really make it to 52 hikes this year. I hope […]