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It seems our first night in the Glacier backcountry proved mildly successful. I've emerged from the 10 mile hike with little to no soreness in my recovering knee and Meisha, although sore and tired, made it in and out just fine despite her own recovering hip injury. The next few days will dictate how much more backcountry will be experienced. At this point, Meisha isn't feeling particularly confident about moving to more strenuous trails and multi-day treks. Injuries suck! See more
We now carry bear spray with us. What a strange feeling. Three "mountain" kids traveling together and all of us are more-or-less completely inexperienced with bears. Yesterday, we stopped at a porting supply store for camping advice and I couldn't help but be thoroughly entertained as Jared had to ask the man at them store how bear spray worked. I felt pretty silly when Jared explained its proper use to and I wondered if I might have fumbled with it in a pinch had I not had said explanation. We're exploring new country indeed. See more
While spending time in Missoula, Meisha discovered that there was a local yoga studio that teaches aerial yoga, which she has been into for the past year or so. After covering a pole dance and aerial silk competition in Ogden Utah, that interest has only grown further. Our friends, Jared and Jesse decided to join her for a little quality upside-down yoga and general body manipulation. We'll let the video and photos speak for themselves, but wanted to extend a great big "THANK YOU" to SJ and the girls at Moksha Aerial Studio Collective for allowing us to come in to play, relax, learn, film, and photograph. If you ever have the opportunity to try aerial yoga (particularly at Moksha in Missoula), it's definitely worth a try!
As we left Ketchum and made our way up the winding mountain roads, it became clear that we were in for a different experience of the sawtooth range than expect (although we generally don't know what to expect). Smoke began to fill the air and the sun struggled to burn through it, resulting in a brilliant orange sunset glow in the middle of the afternoon. I'll never forget the moment we crested the last ridge as the sawtooths came into full view. I'd heard stories of these jagged mountains, but had never seen a picture. There's just something about snarled and dramatic mountain peaks that makes my blood pump faster and renews my zest for life. See more
As it turns out, Southern Idaho was full of unexplored natural wonders for us! I knew that the Snake River flowed through this area, but had no idea how amazing and gorgeous the Snake River Canyon could be! We'd taken several trips to Idaho to visit Meisha's family in the past, but really hadn't gone out and explored the area much at all. We'd heard tales of the beauty that the Snake River Plateau had to offer, but somehow the surrounding rolling brown hills and abundance of potato fields always left me with a bit of skepticism. See more
We rolled into Almo Idaho around 1AM and came immediately realized something... we don't exactly know how or where to stealth camp in the van when in small towns! Somehow small town cops weird us out a lot more than big city cops and our comfort in having an explanation as to why we're sleeping in our van is greatly diminished. After much debate and a bit of driving around, we decided to park at a pullout just outside the city limits of Almo with the intention to vacate early in the morning. We successfully slept through the night without harassment and headed into the City of Rocks around 6AM to finish our night's sleep among the mountains and crazy rock formations. See more
Our adventure truly began as the van rolled out of Anderson Camp and towards Twin Falls. For the past few months, we'd known that our early August destination would be Eden, Idaho for a family reunion. This limited our ability to spontaneously travel, but was worth it. Leaving camp behind, we once again experienced one of the most refreshing feelings in the world, the feeling we refer to as "The Blank Page".
As it turned out, our fellow vagabonding van-based friend Jared had just left Oregon to pursue his own adventures on the open road. We found out he was going to be in the same part of Idaho at the same time so we had to meet up! We decided to meet up at the Shoshone Indian Ice Caves just outside of Shoshone, Idaho. As we were driving, we passed Mammoth Cave and thought maybe it might be better. We called Jared and everyone decided to give Mammoth a try instead. The immediate vibe of the place was creepy with old junker cars, strange Hawaiian-ish carved stone heads decorating the entrance. We walked in through the entrance and met an (unsurprisingly) creepy old man who let us know what the entrance fees were. We paid the man and our adventure began... See more
It all began on a hot, dry, and dusty afternoon in the foothills of Ogden, Utah. We had been told about the "must do" hike called Waterfall Canyon. After a lackadaisical start to the morning, our hike didn't begin until around 1PM. By that time, temps had risen near 100 degrees fahrenheit and the sun was beating down upon the valley. After a good 10 minutes of hiking the trail we realized something: this was stupid and it wasn't fun. We opted to head back to base camp and decided later to try a little (mostly) full moon hiking. See more
Yep. You read right. While in Denver, we had the pleasure of reuniting with one of our best friends from our time in St. Louis, Zoe, from the travel/food blog Hungry Wanderlust. Zoe is a wonderfully talented cook and is always more than happy to prepare and share meals with friends. While perusing the local Asian Market for ingredients for Vietnamese Pancakes, we came across some "live snails". See more
