As ever, Ben was looking for even more wildlife after our butterfly excursion so we bolted down toward Monterey hoping to catch a whale watching boat. We arrived to the insane parking lot at 1:00 and I began madly calling boat operators to find us a spot on a boat. With a little luck, we […]
Making our way down south, we found ourselves in Natural Bridges State Park near Santa Cruz where 100,000 Monarch butterflies overwinter each year. Bree has a few friends that live in the bay area, so we met Matt, Robyn, and their two kids at the park. The butterflies tend to cluster in the Eucalyptus grove […]
For our 5-year anniversary, Bree and I took a long weekend in San Francisco. Enjoy a few shots from Half-Moon Bay. We arrived just in time for the parking lot to close, but after finding some parking on the street made our way down to the beach just in time for sunset.
Our campground was still under a full mosquito occupation when we woke up this morning. Apparently they never sleep, and with that it mind we rushed the take-down of camp, madly swatting at the army of insects as we went. We didn’t even stop to roll up the tent, instead opting to shove it into […]
I didn’t sleep a wink last night, and due to our conjoined sleeping bags, neither did Ben. At 5 AM some squirrels started a loud round of nut gathering, leaving us both wide awake, so we piled in the car and started driving to Rovaniemi, Santa’s official home town. Our main goal for the day […]
The sun finally warmed up our cold tent-site, waking up Bree remarkably early as usual. Our sleeping bags have been reunited in order to cope with the cold here in the arctic circle, and even then it is still a touch cold for Bree. We dozed on and off, and didn’t get going until well […]
I awoke ridiculously early, my legs on fire with itchiness from my mosquito run-in yesterday. The bites were so thick we actually questioned whether a mosquito could have done so much damage. It almost looked like I had a rash, but as the day wore on, it was clear that I’d simply been the victim of […]
Muddy, marshy, and freaking straight uphill. Norway doesn’t mess around with switchbacks. We parked and got to marching straight up the steep slope, occasionally pausing to dodge long stretches of awful mud. Ropes saturated with dingy runoff occasionally appeared to assist with ascending rockslides which were essentially waterfalls after yesterday’s rain. Wearing our lightweight running […]
As we continued our drive down the craggy coastline toward the end of the world the roads became more narrow and twisty. The pace was fast, as well. I couldn’t help but be a little nervous every time a camper or truck would appear in the distance – forcing both vehicles to pull as far […]
We drove on and on, the craggy mountains multiplied until the sheer magnitude of the place began to overwhelm us. It was so beautiful. “Wow…” we kept exclaiming in reverent tones as we drove. It was just so incredible. We darted into every roadside pull-off to take a picture and stare at the wonder ahead of us. […]
Our wild camp was a mosquito den, I ended up with dozens and dozens of bites after only a few minutes of wandering around camp as we took down. Later in the day, the lady at the tourist information desk told us that the mosquitoes were all gone for the season due to such cold […]
Though we’d hoped to sleep in a bit to make up for two late nights in a row, we were up early and on the road by 7:00. Darkness is still hard to come by in these parts. As the rain from last night broke up, the forest almost glowed in the morning light. The […]