The Smith Mountain Lake Dam is one of the largest dams in the United States, and the process to build it required extensive engineering and time. Six years passed between the start of construction and the first generation of electricity (1959-1965), though the lake itself didn’t fully fill until the following year. The dam itself is over 800 feet long and 235 feet long. It’s tall enough to have a 17-story elevator built into the dam itself!

Kouchibouguac National Park is at the heart of Acadian New Brunswick. Situated along the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and with the Kouchibouguac River running right through it, the area is filled with the life and ecology common of an estuary. With hikes along the water, in the woods, and through bogs, there are a variety of sights to take in. Like many other similar areas along the eastern seaboard, the area is also home to sated mosquitoes so come prepared.

With 2023 officially in our rear view mirror, we want to take a moment to look both behind and ahead . . . including a bit of a teaser for some new content coming soon!

I became a runner about twelve years ago. An actual quote from me that year, which Dustin can verify: “I’ll never be able to run a mile.”

I can pin my dislike of running on a handful of physical education teachers in middle school and high school. As an adult, I’m appalled by this because the entire reason the state requires physical education is to ensure students are healthy and develop good habits to keep them healthy as they age. In retrospect, I wonder if I would have found my love for running much earlier under other circumstances.

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!

New 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.

As 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.

Fundy 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! 

In 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.

The 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).