Our son was born in 2017 and before what we feared would be a (temporary) end to our long adventures, we snagged some cheap tickets to Ireland and spent some quality time on the Emerald Isle.
The Itinerary
As I’ve mentioned before, when we’re on vacation we want to see EVERYTHING! For our Ireland trip, this meant circling the entire island and hitting nearly every national park.
Day 1: Landed in Dublin, explored Trinity College
Day 2: Dublin Castle, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Phoenix Park, Dublin Zoo, Jameson Distillery
Day 3: Wicklow Mountains National Park, Kilkenny Castle, and the Rock of Cashel
Day 4: The English Market in Cork, Blarney Castle, Killarney National Park
Day 5: Killarney National Park, Burren National Park, Cliffs of Moher
Day 6: Connemara National Park, Kylemore Abbey
Day 7: Glenveagh National Park, Marble Arch Caves
Day 8: Giant’s Causeway
Day 9: Fly home
We only had a little time in each place, but the time we were able to spend in each was well worth it.
We were recently able to do a quick getaway overnight, leaving around noon and getting back 24 hours later. Although it was quick, we were able to pack a lot of fun in exploring the area around La Crosse, Wisconsin.
Our first stop was spur-of-the-moment. We were driving along US 53 heading into La Crosse, when I saw a sign for the McGilvray “Seven Bridges” Road. I knew from some research I’d done that this was a trail we could hike and we’d made good time, so we made a quick U-turn and stopped. I’m glad we did! It’s an easy trail, very level and well-maintained, and the surrounding floodplain is beautiful. When we were there, things hadn’t quite greened up yet, but we plan to stop again in a month with our son and I’m sure it will be even more beautiful then. Our son’s also going to enjoy the bridges!
Last week, I covered the itinerary for our trip to Japan in 2015, the language, and the train system. This week, I’ll go over some of the highlights – I’ll try to restrain myself!
The Highlights
Overall, I think my favorite city that we visited would have to be Kyoto. That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy Tokyo, Nagano, or Hiroshima, but from a sheer number of great memories, Kyoto tops the list.
In 2015, Alex and I were able to cross maybe the top destination for both of us off our list – Japan! Not only was it our dream destination, it was our first international trip together. Alex and I took Japanese class in high school together and both really enjoy the language and culture – and we were able to immerse ourselves in that for 2 full weeks.
The Itinerary
I have never been able to just pick a few locations and really enjoy them – when I plan a trip, I want to see everything! And the trip to Japan was no exception. Over the course of our two weeks in Japan, we hit 5 major cities, 2 of the 4 major islands, and so many cultural sites. Below is a high-level overview of our trip:
Finally wrapping up our trip to Utah, we had one more stop to make – Capitol Reef National Park. After hitting 4 National Parks and a National Monument, we were definitely exhausted, so we didn’t give this park as much attention as it deserved, but we still got a couple of good hikes in!
Capitol Reef
After nearly 55 miles of hiking over the course of our trip, the flat, easy hikes we took in Capitol Reef were both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, we were able to go slowly, enjoying the nice weather we stumbled into; but on the other hand, we were just so tired and homesick, we barely made it a couple of hours in the park before deciding to hit our Airbnb.
After leaving Zion, we were ready for some less populated hikes – and we got that! Our next stops were Bryce Canyon National Park and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Bryce Canyon
We unfortunately did not give ourselves enough time for the back half of our trip. The only day we had in Bryce Canyon was driving from Zion to Escalante, and due to some major snow only got to spend a few hours there.
In this third installment describing our trip to Utah, I’ll cover our time in Zion. This was definitely the busiest of the National Parks we visited, but we still had a great time!
Day 1
Because of the weather, it took us quite a bit of the day to travel from Moab to Zion – but we still got a quick hike in, the Watchman Trail. This was still a decent first hike (3.5 miles) and gave great views of Zion without having to drive too far.
Our first stop on our trip to Utah was Moab and the two National Parks nearby – Arches and Canyonlands. With three days, we were able to see most of what we wanted to in the two parks and had some time to relax.
Canyonlands – Island in the Sky
Canyonlands is broken up into several different areas – day one in Moab was dedicated to “Island in the Sky.” Our first hike was Upheaval Dome, where we sat and enjoyed a very frigid picnic of sandwiches picked up at Sweet Cravings in Moab (link).
As with many people that lived through last year, we’ve been socially distancing, leaving the house only when needed, and cooped up since spring of 2020. Since we love traveling, this has been a struggle for us – we took a short trip camping in the fall, but haven’t been on any long trips since before Covid.
In November, we started thinking about what a trip would need to look like for us to feel comfortable taking one right now. The criteria came down to this:
