We were lucky enough to have the time, energy, fitness, and wellness (which I never take for granted these days!) to go on three backpacking trips this summer together; Zach also went on several backcountry trail work trips with Washington Trails Association (WTA). Jennifer wanted to make sure all of her backpacking gear and body …
E-bike conversion
Our last bike tour (fall of 2022) was very hilly, and there were a few places where I (Jennifer) had to get off the bike and push it up the hill. One hill in particular seemed very dangerous, because there was a lot of traffic and there really wasn’t a good place on the side …
March 2025 in Portugal and Southern Spain
Time for a change in the blog… In 2010, we went on a 6-week bicycling adventure in central Europe. Internet access along our route was very spotty (we didn’t even have access every day), our phones didn’t work in Europe, and good photos required using a stand-alone digital camera instead of a phone. So we …
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Planes, trains, buses, boats, and automobiles: Alaska 2024
In June, after we returned from our trip to Hawaii, we talked to Zach’s mother (Virginia), and decided that we all wanted to take a trip to Alaska, if it wasn’t too late to organize it for this summer. For both Zach and Jennifer, Alaska was the only state we hadn’t visited yet, so completing …
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Summer Adventures 2024
You may have noticed that there haven’t been many posts here lately… Jennifer had some health issues that affected her ability to go on the type of adventures we like to do between 2022 until this spring (see our previous post about a road/hiking trip to the southwest). But things are looking better now, so …
Southwest Trip 2024
In March of 2024, Jennifer traded in her all-electric 2022 Kia Niro for a slightly-used plug-in hybrid 2023 Kia Niro. She liked driving the 2022 Niro, and liked not using gasoline to drive around town, but decided she wanted a car that was easier to deal with when leaving town. The new Niro still has …
Miscellaneous Adventures 2022
The last few years, around the end of the year we have been making posts with some notes and photos from adventures that we didn’t write up as individual blog posts. We’re a bit late this year, but I (Jennifer) decided late was better than never, so here goes! Early in 2022, Zach decided he …
Southwest Road Trip
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 …
Cycling and Ferry Hopping in the Gulf Islands
In late summer 2022, we decided that it had been too long since we had taken a bike trip, and we started discussing where to go for a fall trip. We didn’t really want to fly anywhere, due to concerns about COVID-19 as well as the hassles of transporting bicycles on airplanes. We discussed going …
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2022 Kia Niro EV — Road Trip Notes
As noted in our previous post, I (Jennifer) recently bought a fully electric car, a 2022 Kia Niro EV. During the month of November, we took a road trip from our home in the Spokane, Washington area to southern California (and back) in my new car. Here are some notes from the trip. Warning: some …
Miscellaneous Adventures 2021
We’ve had a pretty busy 2021 so far, especially the last couple of months, filled with home improvements, new cars, outdoor activities, and trips — so it seemed like time for another Adventures blog post! In January, Zach purchased a Toyota RAV4 Prime (plug-in hybrid). Since this car was not being sold in Washington state, …
Road Trip in the Time of COVID-19
Since March, we’ve been following a pretty strict physical distancing protocol. We’ve kept up our hiking and cycling activities locally, but we have only been seeing people either outside while maintaining our distance or online (aside from masked-up essential trips to get groceries, doctors, etc.). It has kept us healthy so far, but we have …
Maps are back!
You may have noticed that the maps that used to be on this site stopped working for a while, and have just started working again. Here’s what happened, if you’re interested… Google used to offer everyone free use of its maps to embed in their site, so about 8 years ago I wrote a WordPress …
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 …
Tokyo
On November 12, Zach, his mom Virginia, and Jennifer set out in the early morning on a new adventure: we flew to Denver and then on to Tokyo! We spent 3 days in Tokyo, riding the somewhat confusing subway system around and seeing the sights. There are at least 4 different companies that operate subways …
Cycling the Oregon Coast
We had a busy summer this year, but hadn’t been on a bike tour in a while, so we decided to go out and ride part of the Oregon coast. We started our trip to Oregon by putting our bikes on Jennifer’s car and driving to Portland the day after the Labor Day holiday, where …
Coffeeneuring 2017 – Ride 7
Today we could have gone cross-country skiing (more snow up at Mount Spokane!), but instead we decided to take our seventh “coffeeneuring” ride for this season (see the post on our first ride for more information), which means we completed the coffeeneuring challenge! It was another cold November day, and threatening to rain. So, we …
Coffeeneuring 2017 – Ride 6
Today we took our sixth “coffeeneuring” ride (see the post on our first ride for more information). Our previous ride was almost two weeks ago: Zach went to his third board gaming convention of the year, and we also got our first good snow, so we’ve been cross-country skiing instead of cycling. But it got …
Coffeeneuring 2017 – Ride 5
Yesterday we took our fifth “coffeeneuring” ride (see the post on our first ride for more information — also, the inventor of coffeeneuring just posted again on the subject). We decided to ride to the ScrumDiddilyUmptious Donuts, at 1201 Barker Road in Spokane Valley. That’s the donut shop that we attempted to visit in coffeeneuring …
Coffeeneuring 2017 – Ride 4
Today we took our fourth “coffeeneuring” ride (see the post on our first ride for more information). We tried to go to a donut shop, but arrived about 10 minutes after it closed (didn’t check the hours, doh!). So, we circled around to a few doors down from where we went on our third ride …