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Olympic National Park, Washington
Olympic National Park is the only U.S. park system I’ve explored that has so many distinct ecosystems in one central location. Situated in northwestern Washington State, hugging the rugged Pacific coastline, the park has rainforests, beaches, and alpine mountains. We visited in August 2020 on a road trip through Washington State. Eight Olympic Peninsula tribes, including the Quileute, Klallam, and Quinault tribes, used to call this area home before ceding their territory to the United States government in the 1850s. Today, their descendants live on reservations on the shore of the Washington peninsula. As you can see in the photo above, the park’s official welcome sign includes a “come inside”…
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Hiking Rampestreken, Norway
Then he told him about Åndalsnes, a tiny settlement up in Romsdalen valley, surrounded by high mountains which were so beautiful that his mother had always said that that was where God had started when he was creating the world, and that He had spent so long on Romsdalen that the rest of the world had to be done posthaste to be finished by Sunday. Jo Nesbø, The Bat After enjoying the azure blue coast of Ålesund, Matt and I drove two hours east to a town in the center of Norway: Åndalsnes. High, tall, thickly-forested mountains surround the town, which sits down in the valley of the the Romsdal…
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Runde Bird Island, Norway
Runde makes you feel like you're at the very edge of the world, with the deep blue ocean clamoring at your feet. You can almost imagine what it must have felt like to be an explorer discovering a new land. Come for the birds, come for the adventure, come for the surprises, and come for the views.
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Hiking the Gorge Trail in Watkins Glen State Park
When I was young, I oftentimes imagined what it would be like to live in Rivendell, the sanctuary of the Elves in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is a refuge in times of trouble, an outpost of aid and friendship, and a bounty of history and folklore. Blessed by magic and peace, Rivendell is a place saturated with the kind of ancient, otherworldly beauty that only an immortal race could build.
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Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee
It’s a pretty cool thing when your mom and mother-in-law are friends. It’s even cooler when you get to take trips together! The weekend before Thanksgiving 2018, my mom decided to rent a cabin in Sevierville, Tennessee, and invite all of us to come up and celebrate the holiday together. Matt and I both completed our undergraduate degrees at The University of Tennessee in Knoxville (go Vols!), so we are both very familiar with nearby Sevierville and Gatlinburg, both of which are situated in the Great Smoky Mountains of east Tennessee. Gatlinburg is about a three-hour drive east from our hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. To start our trip, we set…
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Sedona, Arizona
Sedona crackles with magic. You feel it as you cross into Red Rock territory, as you watch the sun paint masterpieces onto the ruddy sandstone formations. At full sun, the rocks glow brilliant orange; in the shadows of a sunset, they take on softer pink and purple hues.
