In this episode I walk you through our first time hiking Half Dome! Gear, timing, fear of falling, and HOLY CROWDS BATMAN! I hope you enjoy this talk-through on our Half Dome experience, and find it helpful if you are planning your Half Dome experience! Best Time to hike: April through October Type of hike: Rigorous day-hike, or adventurous overnight with backcountry permit; out and back from Happy Isles trailhead Distance / Elevation Gain: 14-17 miles (depending on route) / ~5,200 ft (1,585 meters) Our Excursion: Out and back overnight at Little Yosemite Valley in early August of 2022 with c ..read more

Have you ever hiked in the pitch black night with nothing to guide you but your headlamp and a somewhat reliable GPS?  We've done more than our fair share of night hiking, but Whitney wins for being the most impressive, oppressive, and exhilarating!  We scored a single-day permit for Mt. Whitney for July 31st of 2022! Now, what this means is that we were blessed with a 24-hour period in which to hike the tallest peak in the contiguous U.S.A., 14,505 ft of forests, creeks, and granite over ~23.5 miles up and back down with ~6,400 ft of total hiked ascent (according to my Garmin; 20.9 ..read more

 Part 2 of our chat with Lance - his time in Cali on his Jeep journey, musings on healing in nature and how it ties to faith, and what's happening next with his backyard biking ventures.  Don't forget to subscribe wherever you get you podcasts, and to check out Lance's Instagram @lance_rk ..read more

 We were super excited to sit down and chat with our friend Lance Kriesch, a fellow outdoor enthusiast who is passionate about encouraging people to experience the outdoors and adventure. He recently went on a Kerouac-inspired jalopy road trip with his brother in his Jeep Cherokee dubbed "Black Betty," and has some fantastic reels you can view on his Instagram @lance_rk while you listen to his stories here!  ..read more

We are hoping to get permits to hike Mount Whitney this year, revisiting a place where Dan had a fantastic experience back in 2008!  We will likely have a few episodes this season as we prep for this trip, and we wanted to start out with a revisit of Dan's '08 trek.   We are working with a new setup in our recently renovated basement, and are finally on dual mikes, so please bear with us as we work to reconfigure our audio (a new mixer program and I'm learning the tech!), but the content will continue to flow as we get into 2022 ..read more

A follow-up we just recorded, looking back at our 2020 Four Corners Road Trip.  I'm sure we'll have more stories to tell from this trip in later episodes, but for now, please enjoy this ramble on how things went - what worked, what didn't, what we might do in the future.   We also go into some detail on our backcountry experience in Bryce Canyon, which was incredible!   We hope you enjoy this chat about our trip ..read more

What did the buffalo say to his son when he left for college? BYE-SON! BISON...Get it...?  Lame jokes aside, Bison bison, or The American "Buffalo" is not really a buffalo. Water Buffalo are known for their milk (and cheese) - please don't EVER try to milk a bison, you'll end up as a National Parks Service cover story or winning a Darwin award.  Bison are my FAVORITE animal - which is saying something, as I've spent my life studying animals of all sorts. They have an incredible conservation story, and are the perfect story-teller of the U.S.A through its settlement, Westward expansio ..read more

This is part 2 of our coverage of Glacier National Park!  Bears, Whistle Pigs, and more epic hikes!  We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed our trip to Big Sky Country ..read more

Our 2019 trip to Glacier National Park was AMAZING!  We hope you enjoy hearing about our time in Big Sky Country, and that maybe you learn something useful for your next outdoor adventure.  Amazing geology, glaciers, wildlife, and hiking await you in the Crown of the Continent, as well as a deep feeling of appreciation for the ancestors who settled this area thousands of years before we got here.  ..read more

So, we love Jeeps. At one point, we owned four Jeeps, but we recently sold the GC.  I've (Manda) been driving Jeeps since my Dad bought one in 1998, and we now own that beloved blue Wrangler that was so lovingly abused by my brother, Matt, and myself growing up.  Jeeps are a mechanical path-maker into the wild, allowing an adventurer to drive further into the wilderness and explore in places where most vehicles can't go.  A stock Wrangler is a pretty beastly little vehicle on its own, but with a few modifications it can be a true trail warrior.  In this episode, we meet up ..read more