As some of you may remember, last summer we took a minivacation in Telluride for Britt's birthday, mountain biking and hiking. A few months ago we attended a local Democratic Party fundraiser, and one of the silent auction items was a July 4th stay at a cabin in Telluride, donated by the cabin's owner (an acquaintance who is a stalwart Dem); since ( Read more... )

Our original Thanksgiving plans had us moving into our new house, but if you've been reading this journal, you know that our move-in has been delayed until sometime in January. This left us with both a hole in our schedule, and some frustration, since we've been putting off vacationing in order to keep an eye on the building process. Because of ( Read more... )

We did our annual backpack in the Weminuche Wilderness at the end of July, but gah, I have so many photos to go through and so much to write about that I haven't even started trying! So instead have a very short write-up about a mini-trip we did last week to the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness in New Mexico.

As you probably know, the Perseid meteor ( Read more... )

We went down to Tucson late last week, as my husband's company was holding board meetings on Thursday and Friday at the fancy Loews Ventana Canyon Resort. The plan was for me to work from the hotel room during his meetings, and then we would have a micro-vacation over the weekend ( Read more... )

We came out of Yoho NP just to the north of where we'd gone in to Kootenay NP a couple of weeks ago, so we drove by the same lakes and mountains we'd seen on the way in. But when we got to the intersection where we had come in to Canada on Rt. 93, instead of continuing south we turned northeast. We drove through Fernie, which looked like a great ( Read more... )

On the morning of August 3rd we packed up our camp and headed back down the Icefields Parkway to the intersection of Canada's Rt. 1, then headed west into Yoho National Park. Just before the town of Field, we made the sharp turn to the right and up the steep Yoho River Valley to the Takakkaw Falls trailhead. "Takakkaw" means "wonderful" in the ( Read more... )

Our original plan was to go to Yoho National Park directly after leaving Lake Louise, but we hadn't realized that our departure date from the Chateau was the Friday before Canada's August Long Weekend. (That's what they called it. I asked the concierge what was being celebrated, and she shrugged. "It's just the long weekend holiday! It's not ( Read more... )

After a week of camping we were ready for a little luxury. Instead, we got a lot of luxury! Britt had made reservations at the four-star Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, right on the famous glacial lake. It's ridiculously expensive, but staying there, right on the lake, meant we wouldn't have to drive up the crowded access road or find parking, ( Read more... )

We crossed the border on Saturday July 26th, and it was a bit of an ordeal. Well, not compared to the officials tromping through our boat and hinting for bribes in the Dominican Republic, and the long forms that need filling out in St. Vincent, but still, we were Americans going into Canada and we thought it would be trivial. Alas, the customs ( Read more... )

We headed out of town, finally, on Sunday afternoon July 19th. The fastest route north actually started with a westward leg toward Moab, Utah, so we made for the campsite at the Canyon Rims Recreation Area we'd been to on a previous trip to Utah, and enjoyed our first evening of vacation with some adult beverages and a beautiful sunset.

( Read more... )