Tales from our Travels
Thanksgiving with the Paiute
This year one of our goals on the journey was to seek out some of the cultural and historical sites that the desert southwest has to offer. For Katie and myself, our public school education conspicuously lacked much of an indigenous history component. We want to make...
Finn Tracks a Cougar
After two brutal days of driving through torrential downpour, heavy winds, and even a white out blizzard crossing the Sierra Nevada range, we finally made it to the Great Basin Desert in Northeast California. We went to bed in...
Desert School 2020
The start to our day: nature journaling As Covid cases began to spike in Washington we decided to pull Finn out of school for the last week before our trip. As the atmospheric river unleashed it’s fury on the northwest with wind and downpour, we decided that we might...
Out of My Comfort Zone
The Osa Peninsula in southwestern Costa Rica is said to be the most biodiverse place on the planet. It has held onto this esteemed title because it has been remote and difficult to access since time immemorial. Last week proved no different. The final leg of our...
Habitat and Inhabitants – Isla Damas: Part 2
The next morning we awoke and retraced our steps back across the river, the boatmen ferrying us from the tranquility and solitude of Isla Damas and into the fray that is the town of Quepos as we journeyed toward Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio. Manuel...
Salvation Via Isolation – Isla Damas: Part 1
After showing us the bedrooms and giving us the WiFi password, Allison the owner mentioned casually that a crocodile lived in the pond in the backyard, and that we might get a glimpse if we were lucky, especially if we went out at night or were to continue reading on...
Guest Post: Tales from a Visiting Abuelo
Thoughts held a few hours ago, elude me more often than I would care to admit, but there is one memory from fifty years ago that still lives as clear as ever. It is of the azure water of the Caribbean Sea breaking over a black pebble beach, a...
Crawling With Life
“Katie, go back in the bedroom and shut the door.” These were my ill chosen words, a futile attempt to shield Katie from the serpent filled reality that we had just entered. It’s not that I was necessarily scared of the snake that I was watching crawl through...
Renaming a Boat With Neptune’s Blessing
It's quite possible that there are more nautical superstitions than there are nautical facts. With so many unknowns out on the high seas, and with so many variables that a sailor has no control over, it's natural that we have become prone to grasping at any whisper of...
The Alaska Report
As some of you may have noticed, the blog stagnated last month. Although we do have our hands full here on the farm, it was more directly related to my working sojourn to the north seas of Alaska. In addition to my home-based GIS business, I don the captain hat when I...
Preparing For The Inside Passage
As Mark has found his groove in the boating realm again, I've also found myself back in the bowels of a boat. My work, however, is not quite as romantic as his. I have no stories of hand planing teak, no lore of milling the wood over the best workbench and...
The Impending Jibe
As the summers of Alaska are so fast and fleeting, Mark and I find ourselves doing what the plants and animals do, striving to soak up every available sun-soaked moment. At the same time, we also find ourselves thinking of the upcoming changing season and the...