When we moved into this house last year, the back of the yard was basically a honeysuckle forest, a dense wall of green stretching across the hillside. We couldn’t even walk through it to get to the dogs if they wandered back there, and all that thick growth was ideal tick habitat. With two dogs … Read more
We’d never taken Amtrak before. We weren’t sure how the logistics would work, whether we’d regret not driving, or if getting around Chicago without a car would be a hassle. By the time we got home, we were already talking about doing it again. Tom and I, Andi and Elsie — four of us on … Read more
We live here. Long enough that the Gateway Arch became part of the skyline instead of somewhere we actually went. Then Tom’s boss and two coworkers came up from Dallas for a work trip. We planned the kind of evening we’d put together for visitors — the Arch grounds, dinner at Ballpark Village, a Cardinals … Read more
Becca and I were friends in high school in Michigan. We both got married not long after, still in Michigan, just in different places, and we kept in touch through those years. Losing Touch With an Old Friend Then life changed. I got divorced, met Tom not long after, and moved to Abilene, Texas. While … Read more
We found it the way we find most things now — by googling “hiking near St. Louis” on a Saturday morning when we didn’t quite want to waste the day. Don Robinson State Park came up. Thirty minutes away, free to visit. Neither of us had ever heard of it. By 9:30 we were on … Read more
We’ve only been to Cannon Beach Oregon once. I think about it more than anywhere we’ve been in the last few years — more than places we’ve returned to multiple times, more than trips that required more planning and more money. There’s something about a place that gets you exactly once, in exactly the right … Read more
Most plans require you to get out of your pajamas. That sounds like a joke. It isn’t. There’s something that happens between the moment you make a plan and the moment the day actually arrives. When you planned it, leaving the house sounded completely reasonable. Of course you’d go. Why wouldn’t you? And then the … Read more
Tom and I had been talking about this for a while — treating St. Louis like a city we were visiting instead of one we live in. Going back to all the places we’d tell a visitor to go. The ones we somehow stopped making time for once they got familiar. The weather last week … Read more
It’s one night. You pack a bag.Drive somewhere close.Check in. Nothing dramatic. And still — something shifts almost immediately. Your House Is Not Neutral Your house holds everything. Not just your things — your responsibility. Even when you sit down to rest, part of you is still tracking what needs doing, what’s waiting, and what … Read more
Most people come home from a trip more tired than when they left. Not because travel is the problem— but because of how we plan it. We try to see everything.Fit everything in.Make it “worth it.” And somewhere along the way, the trip turns into another schedule to manage. A Road Trip That Fits Your … Read more