spend little, work less, experience more
G.Hammer and I were married August 10, 2013, and spent our honeymoon backpacking through Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, then climbing Montana’s highest mountain, Granite Peak. We agreed then we should be in the backcountry for all our anniversaries, too. In 2014 we were backpacking in Glacier National Park and Greg surprised me by packing in his […]
Read More
I don’t know when I first heard about Iceland’s most popular hiking trail, but it had been on my travel wish list for some time. It’s just under 51 miles long, and the FI (Ferðafélag Íslands, or the Iceland Touring Foundation) maintains five huts conveniently located within 7-9 miles of each other along the way. There […]
Read More
It’s time for the latest installment of: We’ve Got a Week Off Where Should We Go? We debated between hiking in Colorado, volcanoes in Hawaii, and whatever-city-in-Europe-has-the-most-business-class-seats-available. Hello, Czech Republic! Well, hello Amsterdam, then hello Prague. It’s been a big dream of mine to visit Auschwitz but once we got to Amsterdam the KLM flights […]
Read MoreAfter two nights at the InterContinental Paris Le Grand Hotel, we changed hotels so we could experience some of our Club Carlson points at the Radisson Blu Le Metropolitan Paris Eiffel. Our room was advertised for €295 or 70,000 points/night, but since we’re Club Carlson Visa cardmembers we got our second night free so the stay […]
Read MoreContrary to popular belief we’re not dirtbaggers all the time (and we do shower on a regular basis although certainly not every day). Greg and I have stayed in hostels, crashed with friends, and slept in airports all over the world, spending less so that we might travel more. But that was before we started […]
Read MoreWe didn’t make any travel plans before we left home, other than we wanted to get to Finland to meet Santa Claus, and to see the uncles. From there we winged our trip and went where our flights could take us, booking rooms along the way. As far as standby goes, we got about as […]
Read MoreThe whole purpose of our European road trip was to go see where Greg’s twin great uncles, Henry and William (Hank and Bill) were buried in France. Good ol’ farm boys from North Dakota (the best kind of boys), they were both Technicians Fifth Class in the US Army, 56th Engineer Battalion, 11th Armored Division. […]
Read MoreThe thing about Christmas markets is that they just make you thirsty… for more Christmas markets. We wanted to take a little European road trip so we flew from Tallinn to Frankfurt and rented a car to take us to the best markets in the world- Germany’s Christkindlmarkts. Greg did his research and chose Cologne […]
Read MoreTake-off to touchdown, Tallinn is a 27 minute flight from Helsinski. I had read about Tallinn’s lovely Christmas market in its Old Town, and since we happened to be in the neighborhood, and since Finnair and consequently Fly.be partner with Greg’s airline, we made the short trip across the pond. The only thing we had […]
Read MoreWhat goes north must eventually go back south, most unfortunately. I fell head over heels for our little log cabin and it pained me very much to hand the keys over the morning we checked out of it. We could not have asked for a better vacation than a cabin in Finland- it’s just right […]
Read More