Book Review of Almost a Catastrophe! A Welsh Family’s Adventures in Malta by Janet Corke

As we found during our own travels to Malta, the country is at a fascinating geographic crossroads, with its unique culture and history, influenced by Italy and broader Europe to its north and Africa to the south. And all the while, surrounded by the sunny, blue Mediterranean. This memoir is the story of a Welsh expat who spent three years living among the Maltese and paints colorful depictions of the country as it was in the early to mid 1960s, a jump in history to an interesting time and place. In the early 60s, Malta was less than two decades past its role as a strategic stronghold for the Allies during World War II, a designation that led to significant deprivations and bombing of the small island nation.

Read More
Book Review of Animal Life by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

For some reason, a few of my recent reads have featured midwives, and Animal Life fits the pattern. Dómhildur is a midwife in a Reykjavik hospital and comes from a long lines of midwives in her family. Closest to her, perhaps, was her childless great-aunt, now deceased but previously a midwife, whose mantle has settled on her shoulders.

Read More
Pocahontas County, WV: Watoga State Park (Day 1)

From the moment we entered Monongahela National Forest and then Watoga State Park proper, it was clear that we had lucked upon a gorgeous spot.

What made us pick Watoga you might ask? Random chance and a few filters applied to the West Virginia Parks site. After over two and a half years of a travel hiatus due to covid, we decided we were ready to head out in the world . . . in a very low-key safe way. Our in-laws have visited a number of Virginia state parks in the last few years and stayed at cabins, and this option wasn’t really on our radar at all. We took a look at the parks in West Virginia, just over the border from our home, and searched for one with availability that also took dogs (many do not). And voila! Watoga State Park became our destination.

Read More
Pocahontas County, West Virginia Trip Overview - 4 Days in the Mountains

West Virginia is known as the Mountain State for a reason. While many states dip into the Appalachian region, West Virginia is the only state entirely within the Appalachian region. And because the Appalachian system of mountains is so vast - spanning from Georgia to Maine - it has sub-sections of mountains. West Virginia is home to the Valley and Ridge and Appalachian Plateau areas, the former of which is nestled against the Blue Ridge Mountains of our local area in Virginia.

Read More
To Make Much of Time's Ultimate Camping Gear & Packing List

Starting way back with our first trip camping, we started a packing list to make life easy when it was time to gather our gear and head into the wild. Over the years, we have continued to update and grow the list based on supplies we find helpful. While we started out with most of our camping gear from Target, we have continued to upgrade our supplies over the years to have longer lasting, higher quality gear.

Read More
Great Lakes Road Trip: Mackinac Island and Toledo (Days 7-9)

Leaving Munising, Michigan and Lake Superior in our rear view mirror, we drove about two hours to St. Ignace, one of two ports that offers ferries to Mackinac Island. The other port, on the southern side, is Mackinaw City. We caught the ferry ride through Star Line Ferry.

One highlight of the short ferry ride was the amusing sight of a UPS truck sitting astride another ferry on the route over. Package deliveries are extra tricky on a car-less island!

Read More
Hiking Apple Orchard Falls in Southwestern Virginia

Apple Orchard Falls is located in the Buchanan area of Botetourt County, Virginia, about an hour-long drive from downtown Roanoke along the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway. Based on our reading, it appears the waterfalls are accessible from two locations: uphill and downhill from the falls. We personally accessed the trail from the higher elevation entry point along the Blue Ridge Parkway. That trailhead is easily visible from a scenic overlook spot, about 7 miles north from Peaks of Otter, a well-known spot in the area.

Read More
Book Review of The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid

As with the two prior novels of Hamid's that I have read in the last few years, The Last White Man tackles contemporary challenges that pertain, at least in part, to race or ethnic origin. I have known people who have both loved his writing and been turned off by it, and I think the two main routes that lead readers either towards or away from Hamid are the topics of his novels and his writing style, which is perhaps best described as perfunctory. I'd add another word to his style in this particular novel: exacting. Characters often use a particular word, think better of it, and then use a more appropriate word. It is an exercise in the importance of language itself and what we mean, what we say, and the vast abyss that often lies in between.

Read More
Book Review of Where Coyotes Howl by Sandra Dallas

Where Coyotes Howl begins with Ellen's arrival in Wyoming, in search of a new life away from her family in Iowa. She has been hired to serve as the local teacher after the prior teacher lasted a year, in what turns out to be a trend in the community.

Within moments, it is clear that most of Ellen's clothing and her small allocation of personal belongings that made the trek are no match for the dusty, hardscrabble life on the prairie in the early twentieth century United States.

Read More
Book Review of A Woman in Time by Bobi Conn

A Woman in Time by Bobi Conn is set in rural Appalachian Kentucky between 1899 and 1939, amidst the backdrop of the Prohibition Era and reminiscent of Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies, set in Virginia's Appalachian region.

Read More
Great Lakes Road Trip: Munising, Michigan (Days 5-6)

The route dropped us right into the middle of quaint Munising, a small town nestled on Lake Superior, home to under 2,000 people. While there, we quickly became acquainted with the fact that this part of Michigan, sitting atop Wisconsin, is known as the Upper Peninsula. Munising sits in a natural harbor within Lake Superior. Directly north of it, Grand Island sits out a few miles from shore and is accessible via a ferry, though we didn’t make it there during our 2-day stay.

Read More
Hiking Read Mountain Preserve in Southwestern Virginia - 4.6 Mile Loop Hike

Read Mountain Preserve is a 243-acre forested area of land placed in a conservation easement to be enjoyed by the public. On our first visit, we hiked a 3.5 mile loop trail up to Buzzards Rock. On our return trip described in this post, we hiked a 4.6 mile loop. We've now hiked nearly all the paths in this park, except the green trail, which is a cutover between a couple of others.

Read More
Hiking Read Mountain Preserve in Southwestern Virginia - 3.5 Mile Loop Hike to Buzzards Rock

Read Mountain Preserve is a 243-acre forested area of land placed in a conservation easement to be enjoyed by the public. The Preserve is surprisingly tucked away in a subdivision in Roanoke, Virginia. Literally between two houses is a small county park sign with a paved road that looks little different from the neighboring driveways.

Read More
A Compendium of Hikes in and near Roanoke, Virginia

We are lucky to live in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountain city of Roanoke, Virginia, a valley with endless outdoor activities and amazing vistas. In this post, we capture many of the area hikes and waterfalls we have explored more in depth.

Read More
Great Lakes Road Trip: Door County, Wisconsin (Days 1-4)

In the humid Virginia summer, we packed our bags, loaded up our trusty car, and prepared to set out on a nine-day road trip to four out of the five Great Lakes. The night before had seen strong thunderstorms and torrential rain, a relatively common summer phenomenon. But the amount of rain and devastation it caused were deemed a once in a one-thousand year flood.

Read More
Great Lakes Road Trip: 9 Days - Door County, Upper Peninsula, and Mackinac Island

The Great Lakes are a unique and - in our minds - an underappreciated feature of the United States. Left behind from glacier craters and meltwater after the end of the last ice age, the immense fresh water lakes are the largest source of surface freshwater in the world when their area is combined and hold 21% of the globe’s fresh water.

Read More
Building our Off-Grid Camp at Laurel Ridge: Selecting a Site

As I shared in our prior post which you can read here, we are the new owners of a 130-acre plot of mountain land, which we have named Laurel Ridge, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of our home state of Virginia. In hiking the multiple trails already cleared, we have come across really interesting features as well as various found objects (about which we’ll write more in the future). We quickly found ourselves with a lengthy list of all the really cool things we want to do, as well as some of the less fun but practical necessities like clearing brush from the trails before nature takes over.

Read More
How We Came to Own a Mountain, or An Off-Grid Dream in the Making

For years we have talked about the idea of buying a chunk of land as our own personal getaway for hiking, camping, and relaxing. For most of those years, the reality was quite a ways out of reach. A distant dream at best.

In the past handful of years it become less distant, more possible, and I spent more hours than I’d like to count trolling realtor.com and zillow.com to check out available land. In the first six months of COVID, we began looking a bit more seriously because after all, you can’t get much safer than your own private, isolated vacation spot.

Read More
A Week Exploring Coastal Maine

Rocky shorelines topped with stately evergreens. The zebra striped lighthouses situated on outcrops. Water that just looks cold, teaming with fish and lobster, many of which will have a second life in the seafood industry. New England style homes that look prepared to weather winter’s winds and equally designed to open all their windows to soak up the northern summer sun. Whatever else it is, Maine is a sensory experience.

Read More