Located in the Himalayas of northern India near the border with Tibet, Ladakh is one of the world’s great destinations for alpine trekking. With the promise of pristine landscapes, stunning vistas and the tranquility of trekking through a land far-removed from the distractions of the modern world, Ladakh is well worth traveling halfway around the world to get there. (more…)
Big Bend National Park in far west Texas is an amazing place. Snuggled into a big bend of the Rio Grande on the US-Mexico border, this park is known for striking sun-kissed scenery where its three distinct habitats of mountains, desert and river meet.
Even though this park is undeniably gorgeous, it seems to be a well-kept secret. At over 800,00 acres, like all things Texas, Big Bend is huge, yet it only sees an average of 300,000 visitors per year. Compare this to the 8-10 million people who visit Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and you’ll feel like you have this desert paradise all to yourself.
Why such a difference, you ask? In a word: Isolation. (more…)
Stop the presses! We know we just announced a series of posts on Iceland, but we accomplished two things this week that we’ve never done before:
Shocker, right?
Matt and I were recently asked by our camera club to put together a travelogue program about our trip to Iceland in the summer of 2012. Even though that trip was almost two years ago now, it finally gave us the motivation we needed to process and edit the thousands of photographs and video clips we shot while we were there. We spent a lot of time working on our presentation and are really pleased with the final result, especially because it reminded us so much of what an amazing time we had traveling in that incredible little country. What a place! It’s hard to believe that a country the same size as Kentucky has so much to offer. You can see the highlights of our summer in Iceland in this short video:
This blog was born in Iceland, and we’ve come a long way since then. In our next series of posts, we will be sharing some of our best pictures, videos, and travel/photography tips in a way that we couldn’t when we were first posting from the road. We also hope to update some of those earlier posts with new and improved pictures and related videos to help give a better sense of what it was really like to experience Iceland.
To help get started, we thought we would begin with a post explaining some of the practical aspects of traveling in Iceland—you know, the basics of visiting any foreign country—how to communicate with the locals, what to eat, how to get around and where to sleep. We think this will be useful to anyone entertaining the notion of going to Iceland, but we also hope it will be enjoyable to those of you who just appreciate traveling vicariously. So here goes! (more…)
We were compelled to do the Blue Lake hike outside of the southwest Colorado town of Ouray after seeing a Backpacker Magazine article touting it as having “one of America’s best secret campsites.” Blue Lake also happens to be located just below 14,150-foot Mt. Sneffels, which is named after the Snaefellsnes peak in Iceland. At the time, we had just returned from six weeks in Iceland, and we couldn’t resist the opportunity to do this particular hike based on that fact alone. What can I say? I guess we’re suckers when it comes to travel nostalgia… (more…)
One of the best things about canoe camping as opposed to backpacking is the ability to get away from it all in relative style. When backpacking, you hike with everything strapped to your back, so every single ounce counts—you don’t want to carry anything more than you absolutely have to. But when you can float your gear in a canoe for the majority of the time, you would be amazed at all the cool things you can take to make your backcountry camp feel just like you are living in the lap of luxury. (more…)
Whenever Matt and I are traveling by canoe, we act like we are in a safari jeep. We are constantly scanning the tops of trees for bald eagles and ospreys, hoping we’ll stumble across a moose feeding in a marsh or searching for beavers around their impressive lodges. While the birds and mammals of the great north woods are far more elusive than their African counterparts, the thrill of spotting something from a canoe is every bit as enjoyable, and we had some memorable moments on this year’s trip. (more…)
At the beginning of our trip, I remember remarking to Matt about how little had changed in the Boundary Waters since we started going there almost ten years ago now (20 for Matt). The water might be a little higher or lower, the animal sightings might be a bit more frequent or far between, the weather might be pleasant or dicey, but we pretty much know exactly what to expect when we head into canoe country. That is part of the joy of returning to familiar territory.
So, imagine our surprise when we headed into Insula, a lake that we know quite well from previous experience, to discover that the entire southern portion of it had been ravaged by fire. And it wasn’t just Insula either. In fact, almost the entire stretch from Insula out to Lake One had been incinerated and was almost unrecognizable to us. (more…)
One of the great pleasures after a long day of paddling, portaging and getting all the camp chores done is to string a hammock from a pair of trees close to the water’s edge, grab a book and perhaps a glass of wine, and relax for a while. We were doing just that one day at our beach camp on Lake Alice and thinking it couldn’t get any better, when it absolutely did.
Choose Your Own Adventure
What’s the first thing you do when you get on an airplane? I don’t know about you, but I am one of those people who immediately opens up the in-flight magazine to study the world map and check out all the cool places I hope to travel to in the not-too-distant future. This slight obsession with maps is one of the things that makes traveling in the Boundary Waters right up my alley.
Take A Hike Photography 