heart & snark-filled stories from a solo-traveling outdoor adventurist
I’ve wanted to go to Italy for as long as I’ve known I was Italian. So, pretty much always.
When I was deployed last year, my now ex-boyfriend & I started talking about trips to take after the deployment. He’s Italian. I’m Italian. We’d both always dreamed of visiting Italy, so Italy it was.…
Read moreIn a knife fight against Cinderella, I would win. Ditto for Sleeping Beauty and all those other fairy tale bitches. I’m meaner than all of them put together, to be sure. Plus, they’ve pissed me off. I’m 33 and alone and maybe they’re partly to blame.
See, it’s impossible to be a little girl and not grow up with the fairy tale.…
Read moreOur 26th president, one Theodore Roosevelt, was a legit badass. He was just 42 when he took office, following the assassination of President McKinley, which makes him the youngest president we’ve ever had. After his death, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions as commander of the Rough Riders at the Battle of San Juan Hill.…
Read moreI always google the National Park units I visit before I actually visit them. I don’t need a ton of information, usually, just some basic history and a rough idea of what it is that makes the park special. When I did this for Cabrillo National Monument, in San Diego, the internet was all, TIDE POOLING, and I was all, what the fuck is tide pooling?…
Read moreWhen you’re on a multi-day drive in a big stupid truck hauling home some furniture that belonged to your dead grandmother, it’s best to include some adventures along the way. In fact, it’s probably mandatory.
I’d never done the drive from Texas to Virginia, although it’s one my grandmother managed a few times in her 89 years of life.…
Read moreFew things make me feel more legit as a world wanderer than showing up in a new city and taking public transit. Buses or metros or ferries or what the shit else, when I travel to new cities or countries, I want in on the public modes of transportation.
And that’s kind of how it started in Verona.…
Read moreI’ve come by the nickname “Snow White” honestly. It’s fitting for me, a girl who won’t turn down the opportunity to befriend or help an animal, who has two husky mutts who own my heart and also a terrible cat I found in my backyard when she was just a wee two-week old kitten.…
Read moreI almost didn’t go to Venice. Everyone I asked seemed to have a very strong feeling about it. Someone would tell me how filthy and smelly and crowded it is and I’d decide in a huff that it wasn’t worth the effort because I hate crowds and also smells. And then someone else would tell me how romantic it is, how beautiful and special and magical.…
Read moreUpon learning I had a nine-hour layover in Amsterdam, I immediately hit the google. Was that enough time for an adventure? How close is the airport to the city center? How hard is it to get out of the airport and back in a handful of hours? I had all the questions and the internet reassured me that yeah, sure, I could totally get into the city and see some things with relative ease and that nine hours was plenty of time for a mini-adventure and airport escape.…
Read more
