I jumped at the chance to escape the Maine winter when my friend Jane invited me to tag along on a trip to Tuscon with her. We spent time hiking in Saguaro National Park and soaked up sunshine and perfect weather.
Thanks to Jane, and her family, for letting me join them on this trip!
My husband and I traveled to Yosemite in late September 2018. We flew into San Francisco, drove to a lodge just outside of the park for a night and then drove into Yosemite Valley the next morning where we stayed for the next few days. Some of the highlights from this portion of our trip were the Mist Trail out to Vernal and Nevada Falls, biking around the valley trails, our hike out to Taft Point and Glacier Point.
We left our tent in the valley and stayed at the Blue Butterfly Inn for two nights to celebrate our wedding anniversary. From the inn, we explored the Tuolumne Meadows and hiked out to the Cathedral Lakes.
On our last day, we made a stop in Oakland to visit my brother-in-law’s bike and coffee shop, Luckyduck, and wandered around San Francisco before flying back to Maine.
My husband and I arrived in Anchorage, Alaska (our luggage unfortunately did not), picked up our rental car and drove to the Talkeetna Denali View lodge. After a long day of travel, we enjoyed the dinner at a local brewery and soaked in some views of Denali from our lodge.
Our next stop was a small cabin near Denali National Park. Our cabin was very unique; it had a tree, actually a forest, growing from the roof. From our cabin, we hiked, took the National Park bus into Denali National Park to explore, got some amazing views of Denali and toured on ATVs under the midnight sun.
For the final leg of our trip, we drove to Seward, AK to explore a costal town. We kayaked, hiked to the Exit Glacier within Kenai Ford National Park and took a boat trip to see the sights from the sea (highly recommend all three).
After over a week of adventuring and solid daylight, we returned to Anchorage to make the long trek back to Boston.
After our wedding, Sean and I flew to Hawaii to enjoy two weeks in paradise. We flew from Boston to New York and then non-stop from New York to Honolulu. It was a long day of travel but it was totally worth it!
Our first few days were spent on the island of Oahu where we stayed at Turtle Bay Resort (highly recommend this place!). We spent our days on the beach, snorkeling, horseback riding and exploring the island.
Our next stop was Kauai which exceeded our expectations. We stayed in Kapaa and from there took day trips to hike around the Waimea Canyon, hike to waterfalls, take a helicopter ride along the Na Pali Coast and go to Polihale State Beach. We also rented bikes and cruised around town, ate at some neat local restaurants and caught some amazing sunsets and sunrises.
