When I first encountered this question, I thought surely I must have done, but I couldn’t think of a story. Then came our most recent trip to Iceland ( Read more... )

What is the best meal you've ever had?I have had a lot of wonderful meals and several spectacular ones and have cooked a few showstoppers, though I have the advantage of being able to make food exactly to my own taste. I’m not sure anything will ever equal the taste of my mother’s fried chicken with rice and gravy and there are few things as ( Read more... )

As a belated birthday surprise, Jason took me on a mystery adventure this weekend. We left early on Saturday morning and drove down to New York City!

( Hotel, Theatre, Dinner, and Friends )

It's hard to decide which trip qualifies as "my first big trip," because travelling was something my family just did. The year before I was born my parents had taken my sisters to Europe on a six-week sabbatical trip, so that was the Big Trip often discussed throughout my childhood and I grew up eager to know when my turn for Europe would come. ( Read more... )

We rolled into Dunedin at 3:30 and decided to go straight to the Otago Settlers Museum to maximize our time. That was a very modern, well-curated take on the history of the area since white people arrived. Perhaps the most distinctive thing was that the early realities with the Maori was very cooperative and there was a lot of intermarriage. ( Read more... )

We felt very lucky that State Highway 1 was open for us to drive south along the coast. Between various earthquakes it's been closed for years, opened at least part of the time in December, but was going to be closed again the day after we needed to drive it. And it would be have been sad to miss the stunning scenery of mountains meeting the sea ( Read more... )

I have loved New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc for many years now, so when we started planning this trip I knew I wanted it to include a visit to the Marlborough region where the best of them are made ( Read more... )

We had a great trip for Alice's February break. There was a chair that needed to get from our house to Jason's brother before he moves back to Seattle and driving it down seemed like the easiest way to go ( Read more... )

When we first put together a schedule for the summer, it didn't look as though we'd be able to make our usual pilgrimage to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, but as the plans got rearranged and put back together it turned out there was a narrow window when Jason and I could get down to Ashland just to see Mary Zimmerman's adaptation of The Odyssey, ( Read more... )

Before I forget, here are the highlights of our trip to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Parks. All the photos are viewable on FlickrWe flew into Sun Valley, ID and spent the first couple of days in Stanley for a gathering of the Furey family. We stayed at Stanley Town Square, which was lovely and right at the end of the dirt road leading up ( Read more... )