Over the years, my tree has gone from perfectly curated (and totally impersonal) when Steve and I were first married, to a hodgepodge of kid-produced ornaments, nods to favorite local spots (there’s a whole Mount Vernon collection on there) and ornaments picked up on our travels. The newlywed me would have been horrified, but I prefer it this way. We’ve made a tradition out of buying at least one ornament every time we travel – and picking one up from each national park we visit, whether far afield or close to home – and it turned out we were on the go rather a lot in 2021, so there are quite a few new additions on the tree this year.
I bought this adorable wood slice ornament at a boutique on the main drag in Lake Placid this summer. I like it because the hikers are approximately the same height proportions as Steve and me (heh) and because it’s true: life really is better on a hike in the Adirondacks.
Not purchased in Lake Placid, but ordered from Etsy in the fall – I will always have nods to my favorite state park on my tree. (Also note the Cornell ornament photobombing in the picture on the right! That’s one of three Big Red baubles I have on my tree.) I consider myself a Virginian to the core, but New York has its place in my holiday decorations.
As second homes go, Washington State is newer than NYS, but I’m starting to feel awfully attached to Seattle after traveling there twice in less than three months this year. My employer is headquartered there and I’ve been flying past Mount Rainier a lot. In October, Steve and the kids accompanied me and we spent a weekend at Olympic National Park. The park store actually had no ornaments (how?!) so I ordered this memento from an Etsy seller when I got home.
Our Thanksgiving travels took us to three legacy national parks (Arches, Canyonlands, and Black Canyon of the Gunnison) and a national monument (Colorado), and I gleefully added to my ornament stash at each one; my brother and sister-in-law were as committed as I was to tracking down the best ornaments in each park store.
It’s such a delight to hang travel souvenirs on my tree every year and reminisce about past adventures. 2021 was a good one for that, as it turns out. (And I think I more than doubled my national parks ornament collection – I already had Shenandoah, of course, and Joshua Tree and Channel Islands.) Wonder where 2021 will take us, and if I’ll be adding any more parks to the stash? I’ve got my eye on Great Smoky Mountains.
Have you added any meaningful new decorations to your stash this year?
On our last morning in Shenandoah, we awoke to bright sunshine and bluebird skies – finally! After a hearty breakfast at Skylands, we shoved off for home, but with one stop on the way: Mary’s Rock, redemption time.
We’d attempted Mary’s Rock before; in fall of 2016, on our first visit to the park, we’d picked it out as a reach hike to do with two babies in backpacks. The hike starts with a climb up first to the intersection with the Appalachian Trail, and then to a ridgeline, which you follow to the summit. We could have finished the hike, I think, but for a particularly cold weather day. The kids cried and fussed all the way up to the ridgeline, then went into baby shutdown mode and fell asleep. Reluctantly, we decided to turn back rather than subject them to brisk winds at the summit. It was the right call, but we had been itching to try again – and finish this time – ever since. With two experienced little hikers and a beautiful day, Labor Day 2021 was go time.
Although our ultimate goal was the summit, there was plenty to enjoy on the way up.
Like a new friend. See the little one up there?
We stood and watched while a mother and two fawns strolled across the trail, casual as you please. Magic!
Intersection with the famous Appalachian Trail! The kids were proud that they had feet on the AT.
Not long after bidding goodbye to our new white-tailed deer friends, we had another surprise treat in store: this absolutely breathtaking sunlight filtering in rays to light up the trail.
Of course photos don’t even come close to doing it justice. It really was like walking through a hall of lights.
A short ridge walk, and we finally made it – the summit of Mary’s Rock!
Triumphant family! It took us almost five years to get here, but we made it.
Set about enjoying those summit views. The payoff was well worth the climb.
I was so proud of both kids – they had so much fun and really expanded their hiking skills over our weekend in Shenandoah. They pushed themselves past their comfort zones and were rewarded, not only with spectacular views, but also with the knowledge that they could do hard things.
That concludes our whirlwind tour of Shenandoah – but never fear, travel recaps continue! I’ll have some holiday and New Year’s content for you for the next few weeks, but in 2022 we’ll head all the way across the country together.
After climbing Hawksbill in the morning, the afternoon was reserved for Stony Man Mountain – the second highest peak in the park. This was a repeat hike for us; we’d brought my parents up here over Thanksgiving weekend in 2017 (or 2018? I think it was 2017) – so we knew this would be an approachable one. The last time we’d climbed Stony Man, both kids were in backpacks and Steve was under the weather. Both feeling good, and with all family feet on the trail, we were ready to go.
Stony Man trailhead. Hello, old friend!
The Stony Man trail is one of the softest, most groomed trails in a park full of soft, groomed trails. After our summer of Adirondack hiking, it felt like the absolute lap of luxury.
Approaching the summit… that was fast!
And views – check! It was almost as grey and misty as the morning on Hawksbill, but still so beautiful. Shenandoah is my home park, and I love every inch of it, in all of its moods.
Next week: one final hike to cap off the weekend, and it’s a good one – redemption time.
Hawksbill Mountain is Shenandoah’s highest point, but not its most difficult hike. We planned to combine it with a few other hikes for an active but doable-for-kids day. The morning dawned cloudy and misty, so the views from the summit weren’t going to be the best ever, but we figured it would still be beautiful (spoiler: it was). Off we go through the woods…
The kids were hoping for more scrambles (like on the accidental portion of our Bearfence hike) but Steve and I were on our game this time. Scramble up this tiny rock, kids.
After what felt like a very short walk, we were approaching the summit of Hawksbill! That went fast.
Let’s go get that summit, team!
Arrived at the top of Shenandoah – views for days, even with the cloud cover and mist.
I’d love to come up here on a sunny, clear day to see how the view changes – but this misty, magical morning at the highest point in Shenandoah was plenty beautiful.
Next week: from the highest summit in Shenandoah to… the second highest summit in Shenandoah.
Another old favorite – we almost never miss the Story of the Forest trail, no matter how quick the visit to Shenandoah. This time, we stopped by the Big Meadows visitor center so the kiddos could take their Junior Ranger oath of office, then immediately struck off for one of our favorite easy, kid-friendly hikes in the park.
The trail dips downhill a ways, then meanders over gently rolling hills – nothing difficult about it at all – for a little under two miles. It’s a lovely hike for kids, since there are plenty of natural elements to keep them engaged (including a Poohsticks bridge) and you can make it as long or as short as you like.
It’s a classic wooded trail; I think quite a few park visitors skip Story of the Forest because it doesn’t boast sweeping vistas (like Hawksbill) or strenuous scrambles (like Old Rag) or roaring waterfalls (like Dark Hollow) – just a peaceful path through a verdant forest. But there’s plenty to see if you drop your eyes to the forest floor itself – like bright green eruptions of ferns, my favorite.
And forest friends, like a sweet doe and her speckled fawns. All together now: awwwwww.
I just love their quiet grace.
Spotted just off the trail: an air quality monitoring station. Unbeknownst to many park visitors, Shenandoah struggles with air quality problems thanks to surrounding industry. Air quality monitoring stations in the park perform important work to ensure that our wild space stays healthy for us all.
Just a beautiful, peaceful walk in the woods – can’t top that.
Next week: we climb to the highest point in the park.
It would be hard for me to pick a favorite spot in Shenandoah National Park – I love every inch of the place. But if pressed, I might say that I love Big Meadows just a tiny bit more than the rest – maybe. (Then again, maybe not. It would be a wrench to have to choose; I’m glad I actually don’t.) I don’t think we ever come to Shenandoah without at least a quick pause at Big Meadows, and ideally, a nice leg-stretching hike.
Off we go!
I was thinking a lot of my grandmother, who had a great fondness for meadows. She would have so loved the expansive views and the lavish goldenrod flowers.
Bees buzzing everywhere! Go, little pollinators, go!
Don’t mind me, I’m just over here playing with my macro settings. #photographynerd
The sun was baking down and the meadow was blisteringly hot. (We were glad to have our hats and approximately a gallon each of sunscreen.)
Such a gorgeous afternoon hike – there’s no end to the little herd paths and spurs branching out every which way in Big Meadows, and there’s always more to see, whether you stretch up and gaze at the mountains off in the distance or crouch down to inspect a bee or a wildflower at close range. I just love it.
Next week: Another old favorite, and some new friends.
Apparently, spending Labor Day weekend in Shenandoah is our thing – at least, for the last two years it has been. In 2020, we drove out for the day, but in 2021 we decided to make a weekend of it; it was so much fun that I can absolutely see it becoming a tradition. We bunked up at Skylands, a park concessions facility right in the central district of the park, surrounded by some of the best hikes for miles – perfect location. After rolling in on Friday afternoon and spending the first night exploring our surroundings, we woke up on Saturday morning ready to go.
Our first hike – of about seven we planned – was Bearfence Mountain. Although we’ve been to Shenandoah quite a few times before, we’d never hit this one before. The trail included a segment of the famed Appalachian Trail! So cool.
In researching our hikes for the weekend, I planned a mix of repeats and new ground, and I also targeted hikes that – while they may include a more “advanced” route, had an alternate route that would be suitable for the kiddos. Steve downloaded the maps into his phone, and following his directions we quickly came up against – scrambles. They started out relatively easy, but they got intense quickly.
The kids did a fabulous job following directions and climbing safely, but I started to get more and more anxious as the scrambles got more intense.
Eventually, we came up against this monster – the route to the summit. You can’t see from this picture, but there’s a sheer dropoff of a few dozen feet, at least. Although the kids had been game, I just wasn’t comfortable with them scaling this beast. Down we went.
After a huddle, we realized what had gone wrong – the map downloaded was the “more advanced” route to the summit, and while the kids had done wonderfully well with it (and wanted to continue) it was never the route I’d intended them to take. We carefully picked our way down the scrambles to the spot where the trail had split off, then we started to climb again, this time up the more “family friendly” route.
Much better.
Eventually, our circuitous route finally deposited us at our goal – the summit! Views for miles.
These boots are made for walkin’.
It was a bit more roundabout of a hike than we’d intended – but that’s fine. More time in the woods is always good, right? It is in my book.
Next week: an old favorite hike, with summer colors.
I always have big plans to capture an entire year in a One Second Everyday video – haven’t been able to make that enough a part of my routine yet to actually do an entire year’s worth of video, but maybe in 2022. In the meantime, I’ll settle for a video of my favorite season (well, favorite tied with fall).
A few weeks ago now, we decided on a whim to go for a short hike at one of our favorite local spots – Rust Nature Preserve in Leesburg, Virginia. We’ve hiked here in all seasons at this point; I love looking for feathered friends (it’s a bird sanctuary) and resting my eyes on the serene meadow. It’s always a special place, but our most recent hike was something more.
As we started out for our regular meadow loop, I spotted something I’d never seen before, at least, not at Rust – trail berries! Early-season black raspberries, specifically.
At first, I thought they were blackberries; I only later realized that they were black raspberries. Either way, though, edible. Blackberries have no poisonous lookalikes – they do have similar-looking cousins (like loganberries and marionberries – or Mayor Berries, as I like to call them, sorry fam I’ll see myself out) but all are fine to eat. So the rule in our house is, trail blackberries and the like are fair game. The kids chowed down accordingly.
As we meandered down the trail, stopping every five feet to pick and eat more black raspberries, I had the strong feeling that my grandmother put these raspberry bushes in this meadow for us.
She loved a good wildflower meadow, and berry-picking; we used to gather bowls of red raspberries from a thicket in the yard at my family’s Adirondack camp and then take them inside, still warm from the sun, douse them in heavy cream and feast.
She also loved Queen Anne’s lace – it might have been her favorite flower; certainly I always associate it with her – and the meadow was dotted with the delicate white blossoms, too. Coincidence? Hardly.
I made the kids thank Great-Grandmother for the gifts. (“Well, of course you did,” said my aunt when I told her this story, “you’ve always been polite.”)
A short 0.6 mile loop took over an hour, but it was worth it. We picked and ate berries (oh, this probably goes without saying, but guys, please don’t eat anything you find in nature unless you’re sure it’s safe, okay?) and walked along talking about how nice it was that Grandmother thought to put all these treasures in our path.
For years, I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with cycling. I love the sport – when you’re spinning along or sailing down a hill, there’s nothing like it. But sometimes it seems like a lot of added complexity (all that equipment – easier to just go for a run, when you really get down to it) or danger (car doors, angry motorists, bike path loiterers, the ever-present fear of a crash). I can go for long stretches in which it seems like just a little bit too much. But when cycling and I are on, we’re really on.
Like in May 2014, when I rode in the Five Boro Bike Tour (forty miles through all five boroughs of New York City) with my dad, brother, and sister-in-law (at the time, she was my brother’s girlfriend). Don’t mind my backwards helmet cover. Why didn’t someone tell me?
That was an epic day! Made even better by the cuteness of our cheering squad:
I can’t even remember Peanut being that small.
A year ago now – at the beginning of the pandemic – I started really encouraging the kids to ride their bikes. Both were on training wheels and we had some good rides on the bike path near our old house in Old Town Alexandria – although I foresaw difficulties ahead with their different natural speeds. Nugget would zoom on ahead while Peanut inched along, talking about cartoons and getting dramatic about every small incline or decline in the trail. There was no way she was moving fast enough to stay upright if she lost the training wheels – hmmmmm.
Nugget did not have the same issues.
Biking buddies!
After a year’s worth of pandemic biking, my parents decided it was time for both kids to drop their training wheels. They were right. I just didn’t have the time or energy to deal with those first two-wheeler lessons. Between working at my old job, interviewing for my new job, administering virtual school, and trying to keep the whole family upright and healthy – I was tapped out. Over Easter weekend, while my parents were visiting, my dad went into the garage and unscrewed the training wheels, then took both kids to a local school parking lot for their first lessons. As I predicted, one kid was a total drama llama, and the other took to it immediately. Three guesses who.
We even had to bring Nugget’s bike to Albany when we visited over the break between my jobs. He can’t be separated from it.
Needless to say, I’m excited to have a biking buddy – but it also occurred to me that I need to get back on the roads, for real, myself. Since we moved out to western Fairfax County, I’ve been paralyzed in the biking department. I was excited to ride out here – when we were looking at houses, I saw plenty of cyclists on the roads and figured that one day soon, that would be me! When it came down to it, though, the narrow lanes and blind curves scared me. I’ve seen how cars fly around corners here, even on my residential street (that’s another story…) and the long stretches of vehicle-free country roads turned out to be a figment of my imagination. The local bike trail wasn’t really convenient to get to, meanwhile, and my neighborhood is made up of a bunch of culs-de-sac (and a few thru roads, including mine, woof) – not great for biking.
People do make road biking happen out here, obviously – like those gaggles of cyclists I saw while house-hunting. But I learned that the bigger bike culture in my town revolves around mountain biking. It makes sense; we have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to trails. Everything from straight, flat, easy trails to winding, hilly technical courses is within a few minutes drive. And I also thought that a heavier, slower mountain bike would be a better choice for biking with Nugget (at least for now; he wants a “kids’ road bike” so look out). The problem? I’d gotten rid of my outdated, beat-up twenty-five year old mountain bike – intending to buy an updated model. But with the pandemic, there wasn’t a mountain bike to be had for love or money… until Nugget and I happened to stumble across the very model I’d been researching online.
I think Nugget might have been even more excited than I was – heh. We’ve made good use of our new purchase, heading out for rides on all variety of terrain a few times a week. Together we’ve explored trails at the parks in our town, shred the little hiking trail in our neighborhood, ridden the culs-de-sac near the house, and taken our bikes down to the bike path after I found an access point that was basically a straight shot from our house (much easier!).
I love mountain biking – especially with the little shredder. We can happily explore trails together every weekend – and we are doing that. But somewhere in there, I started getting the itch to make road biking happen too. It may have been discovering that the bike path is more convenient than I originally thought. It might have been three weeks of watching the Tour de France. (Steve now says he wants a road bike, and to recommit to teaching Peanut to ride. YAY! Thanks Tadej Pogacar! Thanks Mark Cavendish! Thanks Team Jumbo-Visma!)
Somewhere in there, I discovered that the local bike club hosts multiple weekly rides – including a few that are women-only and very supportive. Figuring that my fear of riding on the roads out here might be mitigated if I was with a big group, I pulled out my road bike and signed up for one of the Monday evening rides – one that left from one of the (several!) local bike shops, and promised no drops and a friendly, welcoming atmosphere. It turned out to be just what I needed. Women of all ages gathered at the bike shop – I was probably the youngest, or no more than the second youngest, in the group; everyone brought their own excitement and their own hopes. The ride leader, Kelley, shouted safety tips and road-sharing instructions; sang aloud while riding; left no one behind; and called out encouragement to both the women in the group and the little girls we saw out on their bikes and scooters as we went screaming down the hills in the local neighborhoods. I rode next to another woman, Erin, who spent the whole time telling me that she hosts a women’s ride out of another bike shop on Saturdays and she could really use me “to help show the newbies how to shift gears.” Color me flattered!
Actually, color me beet-red (and disheveled) after fifteen hilly miles through the local streets, bike path sections, and a couple of major thoroughfares. I have Monday night commitments for the next few weeks, but I’ll definitely be back. With clipless pedals next time. I’m ready to ditch the fear.
Do you bike on the roads? Any tips for dealing with the (healthy) fear of cars and blind curves?
covered in flour 