In late November 2022, we embarked on a three-week road trip to the Southwest, which I’m finally getting around to writing up a blog post about (this post is written by Jennifer). We took my electric car… the electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the US right now is having some problems (a lot of charging …
Thailand
After our 3-day visit to Tokyo, on the evening of November 15, Zach, his mom Virginia, and Jennifer headed to Narita Airport and flew to Bangkok. We arrived late at night, so we spent the night near the airport, and started our adventure in northern Thailand the next morning. Trip Overview Here’s a brief overview …
Spring 2017 trips are for the birds (and other animals)
We recently returned from the second of two spring trips. In April, we visited friends and relatives in Florida and Georgia, and in May, we visited friends in Costa Rica. It was great to see all the friends and relatives that we don’t see all that often (plus Zach’s new nephew Bo!). And we also …
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Canoeing the Buffalo River: A Slightly Epic Adventure
On May 6, Zach, Jennifer, Jennifer’s dad Al, and his partner Gwen left on a 3-day drive to Arkansas, where we planned to meet up with Zach’s mom Virginia and cousin Donna (who drove out from Georgia), for a 5-day canoeing and camping trip on the lower section of the Buffalo National River, between Grinder’s …
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Hawaii, the Big Island
In November, we took a 3-week trip to Hawaii, where we spent 2 weeks on the Big Island of Hawaii (Zach’s mom Virginia joined us for the middle week of that), and 5 days on Oahu visiting with family (Zach’s sister Valinda and her family are there, as well as Jennifer’s cousin Luke and his …
Unplanned extra day
We didn’t end up leaving on Thursday the 7th as planned… We got up in the morning and started getting ready to go to the airport, but we were interrupted by a text message telling us our flight out was cancelled. We were very happy we’d signed up for text message alerts and that we …
All roads lead to Rome
The last stop on our trip was Rome (Roma in Italian). We took a fast train from Venice to Rome on Saturday the 2nd of May, which arrived in the early afternoon, and our flight out was scheduled for Thursday the 7th. This gave us four and a half days to explore the city. Saturday, …
Venice and the Veneto area
On Monday the 27th of April, we packed up our bags in Florence, and took a train up to Venice. The first thing that happens when you arrive there by train is that you go out the front of the station, and instead of being on a busy street with tram and bus connections, you’re …
Florence
Before leaving on this trip, we’d looked at a map of Mediterranean Europe, and noticed that the famous cities of Florence (Firenze in Italian) and Venice (Venizia) were easily reachable in a grand tour from Barcelona to Rome. So… we decided we’d be crazy not to visit both of them, and headed to Florence first. …
Mediterranean Italy
Our long train ride on Tuesday the 21st took us from Arles, France, across the border into Italy, where we stopped for the night at a generic hotel in Savona, a small city on the Mediterranean coast. We had been looking forward to Italian food, one of our favorite cuisines, and had a nice Italian …
Montpellier, Arles, and the Camargue, France
We spent the week of April 13-19 in Montpellier, France. Jennifer attended the “Drupal Developer Days” conference, where she spent her days collaborating with other developers on Drupal code improvements and having other Drupal conversations. She normally works alone at home, using text chat to keep in touch with the Drupal community, so she really …
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Riviera Maya
On Thursday, March 7, 2013, Zach and I (Jennifer) left the house at about 4 AM for a short but very pleasant Mexican adventure, courtesy of Zach’s employer. We flew from Spokane to Cancun via Denver, and were driven to our very posh home for the next four nights: the Grand Velas Riviera Maya, a …
Allerdale Ramble
I was in London last week to attend DrupalCon, where everyone who works on the Drupal software open-source project (Drupal is the software I use to build web sites for my clients) gets together. Since it is very tedious to fly to Europe, and I was going to have to adjust to 8 hours of …
Berlin: Lessons in Recent History
After arriving in Leipzig, we counted up the number of days we had left before our flight home, the number of days it would take to bicycle to our next destination, and the couple of days we needed to get to Frankfurt, pack up our bikes, and catch the flight home. The conclusion: more long-distance …
Baths, Mud, and Goulash
For the final leg of our Danube trip we rode mostly in Slovakia, but ended up spending our nights on the Hungarian side of the river. The road conditions are somewhat dicey. We encountered various grades of gravel – some mixed with grass, and mud; more about that later –, small roads of varying quality, …
More Austrian Danube
The last few days, we continued riding down the Austrian Danube, again switching from one bank to the other of the river in search of the best route, the most interesting sights, etc. Unlike the previous German section of the Danube, we were almost always riding on paved surfaces, either bicycle trails or very lightly-traveled …