You’ll notice the title does not include the exclamation point I would normally include… Let’s just get right to it – we’re really excited and happy to be here, but man getting here was a classic “not a pony ride in May-sunshine” experience. Our saga started sitting in above-average Belt Parkway traffic on the way to JFK. After getting through security, which for some reason closed the TSA Pre check-in line at 7:30 pm (is this a thing at JFK???),…
When traveling, especially on a long journey, finding an inviting, comfortable, and safe place to get some rest is critical. During the pandemic, when we weren’t traveling as much, it was still important to search for places of refuge from the mundanity and quiet but omnipresent low level anxiety of virus-driven daily life. Regardless of the circumstance, finding an oasis of peace and rest amongst the chaos can go a long way towards restoring both mental and physical stamina. In…
Well it’s been just about a month since we got home from our epic family adventure to Hawaii. Even though it’s been a while since I stood on the side of the Piilani Highway, feeling like we had reached a new pinnacle in our adventuring career, I’m sitting here at my office staring out at the steady thrum of cars and trucks motoring along the New Jersey Turnpike, with a strange feeling of unreality. In a lot of ways, it…
So after a week of exploring Maui with our son and my dad, I thought I would summarize what we did, because a lot of it isn’t really what families with young children do when they go to Hawaii. In fact, few families even go to Maui, as it’s generally seen as a honeymoon/romantic type of destination. But we actually found there was a ton of stuff to do, even with a 4 year old! We stayed Lahaina, near the…
One of the things I was most looking forward to during our Hawaii trip was taking a drive up to the top of Haleakala National Park. I was excited to visit one of the most remote national parks in the entire system, and the pictures I had seen made it look like a far easier version of our somewhat ill-fated attempt to “simply walk into Mordor” aka the Tongariro Alpine crossing. The Red Crater really does look a lot like…
This is Part 2 of a series on The Road to Hana and the “Forbidden Road” aka the Piilani Highway aka “the back road” to Haleakala. If you’d like to read about our experiences heading towards Hana, check out Part 1 by clicking here. The Piilani Highway has a legendarily bad reputation due to a sometimes literally lethal combination of really rough road patches, blind turns (some with cliff walls on one side and cliff drops into the Pacific ocean…
So I wrote this right after we got back from a rather epic driving day. After leaving the house at 8 am in the morning heading east via the Hana Highway, we staggered back at about 7 pm after heading west on the Piilani Highway. In short, the trip was incredible. But you already knew that, right? The Road to Hana is one of the best-known drives in the entire world. Nicknamed “the Divorce Highway” because of all the supposed…
The second half of our Oahu adventure (aside from LOST film site searches, which I already talked about), included our very first Hawaiian luau, and an exploration of the east coast of Oahu. For our luau experience, we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie. This effectively completed our Oahu island circuit, as we had previously been in this town during our trip to the sea turtle beach earlier in the week. The Polynesian Cultural Center is far more…
Last time we were in Bermuda, it was just the two of us and I lamented the fact that we really didn’t get a whole lot of time to just relax. There was just so much to see and do, that we felt compelled to do it all. And I thought we DID do it all. Well it turns out that we really didn’t! First of all we missed out on the largest fort on the island, when we arrived…
The final day of my journey started quite similarly to many other days from the prior two months. I woke up alone, in a dingy motel, had a quick bite (if available), and hopped into my car with a cup of coffee, and went off in search of new things to see over the course of the next 12-16 hours of moving around. This morning was different though. By this point in the journey, I had been living as a…