I have a confession. I have fallen totally and completely in love with the Atacama Desert in Chile. The varied landscapes created by the wind, the sun, and the presence or absence of water are mind blowing. We spent the first few days here exploring closer to the town of San Pedro de Atacama. These were […]
“Ride like a Chilean. Like you are making love to a woman,” Yasu our guide said about our impending horse ride. This…was our introduction to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. Glenn’s brother Chris had flown down from Santa Cruz, California, to join us for a little adventuring. On this first morning we found ourselves […]
Chile’s Lake District is a very dangerous place and not just because of the looming active volcanoes. Known as the Región de Los Lagos in Spanish, much of the Lake District was populated by thousands of German immigrants in the mid-1800s (following the eventual subjugation of the indigenous Mapuche people by the Chilean government) and […]
Glenn spent our first night on Easter Island writhing in pain on the bed in our hotel room. We had come to the island, whose true name is Rapa Nui, to visit the stone figures called moai. (sounds like “mow-eye”) Unfortunately, Glenn decided to bring some stones of his own in the form of kidney […]
Our first trip to the Amazon blew me away. The sounds, the smells, the tastes…the heat, the humidity, the bugs…the things that can kill you! We spent two days at a remote jungle lodge called El Albergue Español run by the indigenous Amazon Quichua (kit-chew-wa). We enjoyed an amazing nature hike through a jungle preserve. […]
We’ve only been in Ecuador for a few days and we have already fallen in love. The people are warm, generous and very patient as we stumble with speaking Spanish. Everyone greets us with a smile and “buenas dias” – and we hope that is as far as the conversation goes because beyond that they […]
I don’t often appreciate things until they are gone. I’m typically focused on the next great thing – forgetting to enjoy what I have at the time. My mother once told me this character trait makes me high maintenance because I am always distracted scheming the next great thing. She’s probably right (as mothers always […]
Croatia is the land of waterfalls, whiffs, warblers, weed-whackers and war. Glenn and I recently found ourselves in Croatia to run the first ever Dubrovnik International Half-Marathon and we spent some time after that event to explore this beautiful country. We decided to join an REI Adventures tour that included biking, hiking and kayaking across […]
“Surround yourself with people that make you a better version of yourself” was the quote on the back of a guy’s t-shirt as we ran the Portland Half-Marathon last weekend. I had started studying the t-shirts people were wearing for this momentous event in an effort to distract myself from the fact that I was […]
Every year Glenn and I plan at least one mystery vacation for each other. We plan a special outing and the other person doesn’t know what it is until it happens. I stole this idea from a co-worker who does this with his partner and I thought it was brilliant! This past Labor Day weekend […]
I read the book Wild last summer. In case you’ve been living in a cave – this is the popular book by Cheryl Strayed (a fellow Portlander, no less) about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Admittedly this was a very atypical book for me to read as I rarely, if ever, read non-fiction. I’m really […]
Glenn and I are training to walk all the way around Mt. Hood over this coming Labor Day Weekend. It’s called “Round the Mountain” and over three days we’ll hike nearly 45 miles, with 36 other people. Each day we’ll be doing 14+ miles at altitude with significant elevation gains/losses throughout the day. It promises […]
This past weekend we hiked further than I have ever gone in a single day – and not necessarily on purpose! I had a friend mention that she had recently hiked to Larch Mountain and that it was a challenging but doable nine miles round trip. This sounded exactly like what we wanted to do […]
Glenn and I are training for multiple hiking trips later this summer. In August we plan to do backcountry camping in the Olympic National Park/Forest area (Washington) and over Labor Day Weekend we’ll be hiking all the way around Mt. Hood (Oregon). Circumnavigating a volcano! It doesn’t get much cooler than that. Both trips will involve considerable […]
This past weekend Glenn and I set out to hike Dog Mountain – a notorious hike in the Columbia River Gorge outside of Portland, Oregon. I have always been too intimated to try this hike – a seven mile loop with 2,800 feet of elevation gain. Very steep going up…and just as steep coming down! When […]
