As nature lovers, hiking has been one of our go-to outdoor activities over the years. We’ve gradually gotten smarter about what to take with us to make our hiking experience enjoyable (and safe). Check out our ultimate guide to hiking gear! Our guide is geared to day-hikers, not backpackers, which is something we may get into some day but haven’t yet!
Read MoreNew Brunswick, Canada, has a total of two national parks - Fundy and Kouchibouguac. So, if you are an avid lover of the outdoors and find yourself in New Brunswick, visiting both just makes good sense! Fundy National Park is situated along the southern coast of New Brunswick, perched above the Bay of Fundy. Kouchibouguac National Park is also coastal but along the eastern side of the land, near the confluence of the Northumberland Strait and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.
Read MoreAs we shared previously, in 2022 we finally did something we had talked about doing for decades. We bought our own recreational land for camping and hiking. We wanted a spot within a reasonable driving distance of our home so distance wouldn’t hinder us from enjoying it, we wanted to be at a higher elevation to escape the hotter, more humid temperatures at lower elevations, and we wanted views. Check, check, check, and check! Laurel Ridge, which is what we named our mountain getaway, meets all of these, though it didn’t check our fifth box of having running water, though we believe there are likely springs that are on our list to search for.
Read MoreFundy National Park sits along the Bay of Fundy, which is famous for some of the highest tides in the world. Depending on the exact spot, the difference between low and high tide fluctuates between 15 and 48 feet, roughly the height of a 4-story building!
Read MoreIn the early 1920s, the American soldiers who had survived the brutal trench warfare had returned from the Great War in Europe. They returned to their homes and to new lives in a rapidly urbanizing country. Except some people lived a rural existence, not much different than the lives of their parents before them. And some of those same people had spent the war deep underground in a coal mine.
Read MoreThe drive from southwestern Virginia to New Brunswick, Canada, is no easy feat. An optimistic Google map will proclaim the drive to be 18 hours in length, but that estimate is built for the travel of future bots; real humans have to stop to eat, use the bathroom, caffeinate, and replenish the gas in their cars. Oh, and there will definitely be traffic, perhaps some passing rainstorms to slow traffic. There is a border crossing where every question feels like a trick and a trap and an honest answer to the questions will gain you a free pass to a (friendly but time-eating) secondary screening (true story, more below).
Read MorePart thriller, part exploration of contemporary race issues in America, part mirror to our online selves, this novel is all heart and hard to put down. I tore through While We Were Burning in about two sittings in the course of 24 hours and found myself fascinated by the characters and the story. The tale is perhaps a tad melodramatic at times near the end, but it hovers in the realm of believable in the way that our online selves have created a society where there is more melodrama.
Read MoreOrphaned, alone, and working to survive, life has been rough for Annabel until her fortune changes with a chance meeting with lawyer George Craig. George has newly arrived from big city Knoxville and is educated, intellectually curious, and immediately smitten with Annabel. After a whirlwind romance that seems almost too good to be true, they settle in to a nice home with neighbors that Annabel befriends. For the first time, she is exposed to a middle/upper-middle class existence in her rural town of Dayton, Tennessee.
Read MoreWe decided to visit New Brunswick with an itinerary built around two of Canada’s National Parks: Fundy National Park, situated along the southern coast on the world famous Bay of Fundy, known for some of the highest ranges of tides (the difference between low tide and high tide is about the same as a 4-story building!), and Kouchibouguac National Park, along the eastern coast of the province. In the more northern and much more French speaking Bertrand area, we got a glimpse into the history of the Acadian people in Canada, the country’s Francophiles who were booted off their land and out of the country during political upheaval.
Read MoreThe Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese - In a small town in India, one family has a curse where each generation will lose one person to a drowning death. Sometimes they drown in rivers, sometimes in small puddles of water. It is from this unlikely starting point that this epic novel takes flight over multiple generations that confront class struggles, medical mysteries and ailments, loss and love, all against the backdrop of the medical industry in India and eventually a salvation.
Read MoreThe Woman with No Name by Audrey Blake is an engaging, well-paced story that was hard to put down. Set in World War II, the novel follows the true story of Yvonne Rudellat’s heroic and brave efforts to undermine the Germans in Vichy France by joining the world of espionage.
Read MoreCanaan Valley (pronounced kuh-NANE) is a beautiful valley in the northeastern portion of the state. It is known for being the location of Blackwater River and its eponymous state park, an area with a number of ski/four-season resorts (while it’s known for the Canaan Valley Resort, there are others), home to Dolly Sods Wilderness, and neighbors the towering peaks of Seneca Rocks. If you like the outdoors, this is a spot to add to your list!
Read MoreNew River Gorge National Park is one of the newest spots to earn the national park designation, which it received in 2020. While there are endless options for how to spend time in the area, and you’d need a lengthy trip to take it all in, a well-planned two day visit can still render visitors in awe of the area’s grandeur. See a quick overview immediately below with any more details and driving route maps when you read on!
Read MoreI feel like we’re not alone when we say sometimes it is easier to plan a trip halfway around the world than to take the time to visit somewhere within driving distance of home. For years, we have talked about visiting the New River Gorge area as well as other spots in the Canaan Valley vicinity: Seneca Rocks and Dolly Sods. At half a day’s drive, this shouldn’t have taken about a decade in the making, but it did. In fact, it took us so long that by the time we visited, New River Gorge had joined the national park system, the 63rd park designated as such in 2020.
Read MoreI added twelve more books to my 2023 reading list in May and June: The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, The Giver by Lois Lowry, Named of the Dragon by Susanna Kearsley, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World by Patrik Svensson, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, and many more!.
Read MoreThere are certain surface parallels between author Dominic Smith and his main character, Hugh. Like Smith, Hugh is an academic, enchanted by the crumbling Italian towns and has traveled to Valetto as part of a research effort. But Hugh has not picked just any Italian town; he comes from a long line of local inhabitants and plans to work on his academic research from the small, Medieval cottage in Valetto that his mom left to him as his inheritance.
Read MoreAs soon as I saw the title of *Close Your Eyes: A Fairy Tale* I was intrigued. What hooked me was the term 'fairy tale,' making me reflect about how rarely that term is used in contemporary fiction, even when the foundational elements are employed.
Read MoreBurkes Garden is an unexpected find.
A couple of years ago, Dustin was looking online at a map of our greater region - Southwestern Virginia - and spotted a place on the map that looked geologically interesting. And that is how Burkes Garden came to be on our radar.
Read MoreHaving exhausted most of the trails in Breaks Interstate Park, we considered finding a new place to hike on our last full day and found a few trails that piqued our interest in Pikeville, KY, at Bob Amos Park. I already knew that Pikeville was having its annual festival (none other than Hillbilly Days) but figured a hike nearby would be okay and also allow us an opportunity to check out Pikeville. When we looked online for park info in the morning and - thanks to Google - saw that the park was exponentially busier at that moment (at 8am) than normal, we realized the entire area was probably tied up with the festival. So, change of plans.
Read MoreWith temperatures set to soar to the mid-to-upper 80s (yes, in Virginia and Kentucky in mid-April!), we planned a morning hike and an afternoon drive in Breaks Interstate Park. Like the prior day, we looked at the trail map and concocted our own version of a multi-trail loop: Tower Tunnel Overlook (0.2 miles) to Prospector Trail (1.5 miles) to Ridge Trail (0.5 miles), and 0.8 miles back along the road to our car for a total of a 3-mile hike over the course of 2 hours 15 minutes.
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