National Parks – Page 2 – The Pursuit of Life

May 14, 2016 / 0 Comments

Should you take your dog with you on your road trip?

Adventure Dog - Traveling with a Pup on your Roadtrip

If you have ever met us, you know how obsessed we are with our pup. Our furbaby. Our darling princess queen bee nugget Coconut. So when we decided to take a long road trip around the Western U.S, we thought well of course we will take Coconut with us! Well, that’s what I thought. Ryan was a little more practical and said – maybe we should think about this a little more. And of course I won out and we took her with us! But there are some serious things to consider when deciding whether you should bring your dog along with you on your roadtrip.

Coconut was with us for 5 weeks on the road and we absolutely loved having her along for the adventure. After all, you wouldn’t leave your kids at home for such a grand adventure, so why would we leave our fur-kid at home?!

May 7, 2016 / 2 Comments

The Grand Canyon – Bright Angel Trail and Campgrounds

Bright Angel Trail, Grand Canyon

We made it!

There are few things in life that feel as good as the first stretch the morning after a particularly invigorating yoga class. What does not feel so good is the wake up stretch the morning after climbing from the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the top – ouch! But to say that the hike is worth it is a gross understatement. It is more than worth it. After a night down at the Bright Angel Campground (see the post here about our hike down the South Kaibab Trail to the campground at the bottom of the Grand Canyon!), we were headed back up to climb out of the canyon.

May 6, 2016 / 1 Comment

Life on the Road | April Digest

The Wave at Coyote Buttes, Northern Arizona

Another month on the road! Here is the tally of facts and figures for our roadtrip as of May 3rd (a few days over the month mark!):

May 1, 2016 / 2 Comments

The Grand Canyon – South Kaibab Trail and Exploring the Inner Canyons

South Kaibab Trail, Grand Canyon

“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” – John Muir

South Kaibab Trail, Grand Canyon

April 11, 2016 / 8 Comments

So how did we decide on a 6 month road trip anyway?!

Excellent question. If you’ve decided to take some time off from work to do something different for a bit, how do you begin to decide what to do? For us it was a long time of what ifs and how abouts and that sounds interestings. One hears from time to time about those people who just quit their jobs, sell their belongings, and travel the world. Actually one often reads about them in a magazine or newspaper or blog. I certainly have – in fact I usually print those stories out and put them on my desk amidst the stacks and stacks and stacks of papers, intending to read up on these fascinating people if only I could find the time.

And then about a year ago, I said to Ryan – no, really, why not?! And that started a semi-serious conversation about whether we could actually take some time off.

April 6, 2016 / 0 Comments

CAMPSITE REVIEW | BLACK ROCK CANYON, JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK

In addition to chronicling our adventures, I thought I’d make this blog a bit useful as well. And so this begins a series of campsite reviews for the places that we are camping. We’ll start with Black Rock Canyon Campgrounds, in Joshua Tree National Park, California.

Of course for a review to be useful, it’s got to be conducted along some sort of metric, it needs to be accompanied by photos and it needs to be personal. I’ll only review campsites that we stayed in for 2 days or more, so that in fairness we stayed long enough to get a general sense of the place.

April 6, 2016 / 0 Comments

JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK – Part II

Not to be outdone in funky-ness or prickly-ness by the Joshua Trees, the Cholla Cholla Cacti are really something to see in Joshua Tree National Park. We stopped by the Cholla Cholla Cactus Garden on our drive to the south of the Park and I have to say that it is one of the strangest places that I’ve ever been. All of a sudden there is a huge collection of these relatively short, skinny, spiky cacti – they are few and far between anywhere else in the Park so far as I can tell, but they grow in abundance in this one spot. Again – this is one bizarre national park! This cactus garden is another favorite spot of mine here in Joshua Tree.

September 10, 2015 / 2 Comments

The Pursuit of Wanderlust: Crater Lake, Oregon Part 2

Part 2 of Crater Lake, Oregon – a quick Fourth of July trip to a beautiful national park. Saturday we again hiked down to the lake and hopped on the boat to take us to Wizard Island! A few of us hiked to the crater at the top of Wizard Island, while the rest of us hiked to the other side of the island for some fly fishing, a newly acquired (and quite tricky) hobby of ours. We caught rainbow trout and brown trout.

September 2, 2015 / 2 Comments

The Pursuit of Wanderlust: Crater Lake, Oregon Part 1

I love the 4th of July in America. It almost always means great weather, good food outdoors, and happy people celebrating the good things about being an American – freedom, opportunity and a beautiful land. Fireworks and hot dogs, lemonade and picnics, beaches and flags waving, for me it i s a holiday of laughter, sunshine and delicious treats.

This year R and I drove up to Crater Lake, Oregon, with some of our friends who live in our building in San Francisco. We have a strange/amazing Melrose Place-thing going on in our building – we have become very close friends with several of our neighbor couples, which makes socializing with awesome friends as easy as strolling down the hallway. So, 3 of these couply-friends joined us in Crater Lake for the 4th. We drove up Thursday night after work and stayed in Ashland, Oregon, a quick pit stop to break up the long drive to the national park. Unbeknownst to me, Ashland is quite the destination – a quaint, all American little town (perfect for the 4th holiday!) known for its Shakespeare performances in the summertime. We didn’t have enough time for Richard the Third, but we were able to pop into a couple of the little books shops on Main Street and of course the Ashland Fly Shop. R loves fishing and I love books, so it had to be done.

The Pursuit of Life

Tag: National Parks (page 2 of 2)