We had a very busy summer this year — we didn’t go on any big trips, but we had quite a few small adventures. And we didn’t get around to blogging or posting any photos until now… Better late than never, I hope? Zach spent most of June on a road trip, which Jennifer didn’t …
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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Jennifer’s New Bike (and project)
After our Natchez Trace bicycling adventure, I decided I wanted to get a different bicycle. I’ve really enjoyed riding my bike (a Volae Century recumbent bike) for the past 5 years or so — it’s comfortable and rides well with or without a load on it. But it was difficult (to say the least!) to …
Cycling the Natchez Trace Part 2
When we wrote our last post, we had reached Kosciusko, Mississippi on our 3-week Nashville to New Orleans bike trip via the Natchez Trace Parkway. So… let’s see. From there, we continued riding south, and took two days to reach the area of Jackson, Mississippi. When we got to Ridgeland MS (a suburb of Jackson), …
Cycling the Natchez Trace Part 1
The past few years, Zach and Jennifer have taken a bike trip in the fall, and this year, Jennifer suggested that we bicycle the Natchez Trace Parkway. Part of the reason she suggested it was because it goes through Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee, which would get her down to missing just Alaska in her quest …
Summer 2016
We had a pretty busy summer. Nothing really seemed to qualify for its own “adventures” post, but we had a lot of fun and went to some beautiful places, so I thought I would post a photo gallery of some of our summer activities, which included: June – Adventure Cycling’s National Bicycle Travel Weekend – …
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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Adventures in Remodeling
For a few years, Zach and I have been talking about remodeling the kitchen. Our kitchen, living room, and dining area, when we bought the house, had a semi-open floor plan, but there was a big wall, not quite up to the ceiling, between the living room and the kitchen. This meant that when we …
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 …
Minnesota cycling part 3: Driving back
After finishing our bike ride across Minnesota in Fargo, North Dakota (see previous post), we packed everything back up in the car and set out to drive home on Wednesday the 23rd. We drove most of the way across North Dakota, and camped south of Medora in Sully Creek State Park, which had a very …
Minnesota cycling part 2: Cycling across the state
After our road trip to Minneapolis (see previous post), we set off on Tuesday, September 15 on our bicycles. The Adventure Cycling route we were following started in Stillwater, Minnesota, which is about 30 miles west of Minneapolis. The map we had provided a “spur” route from the Minneapolis airport to Stillwater, but we weren’t …
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Minnesota cycling part 1: Driving there
Zach and Jennifer are both (not too seriously) trying to visit all 50 United States; they’re each down to less than 10 to go. A while back, we compared our lists and found that neither of us had ever been to Wisconsin, Minnesota, or North Dakota. Minnesota seemed like a nice place for bicycle riding, …
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 …
European Travel Logistics as of 2015
We’ve been traveling around Europe for a month now (about to fly home), and I had some thoughts about the practicalities of how we’ve been traveling that I thought would be useful to share. Packing and luggage We both used travel packs for the trip, which allow you to either carry your stuff on your …
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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On to France
On Saturday, we packed up our bags and headed north from Barcelona. The first leg took us on a high-speed (over 200 km/hr) train ride to Figueres, a small town up near the border with France. We hopped on a bus into the center of town from the train station, and visited the very interesting, …