Days not Homeless: 6 Years, 2 Days ...and loving every second of this alpine adventure!
Cape Epic Final Countdown
Going back two years I missed out on the Absa Cape Epic with Team CoreCo due to hip surgery, the following year timing and other events messed things up, bringing us to 2018. After receiving the green light from a very understanding wife I hit the submit button for...
A Country or one Big Mall
Having made the decision that we would waste the better part of an entire day to country bag Andorra it would have been far better for us if the rental car had refused to start. We were spending a couple of nights at Mas El Guitart, a spa hotel in L'Hostalnou de...
The Only Way is Up
The time being slightly after 8am during the week and having no espresso maker in our Funchal airbnb rental it was time for one of my frequent fifty meter walks to the local cafe and grocery store. It would have been far easier to fit in with the locals had I ordered...
Sweet and Juicy Pineapples
Having just spent three weeks in Portugal the thought was why not continue in the Portuguese vain and hit the islands, beginning in the Azores before heading down to Madeira. The Autonomous Region of the Azores is located around 850 miles from the mainland and total...
Housesitting Portugal
Housesitting, whilst not an entirely new concept to us, was different on this occasion due it being our first overseas experience. We didn't intentionally chose Portugal but with neither of us having visited this European holiday destination before it made the sitting...
Vinson!
Nine years was far too long to be away from expedition style mountaineering and I was getting very itchy feet. Disappointingly I had missed out on the summit of Everest back in 2005 by a mere 1000', bouncing back three years later with success on Carstensz Pyramid...
Going Broke, The End
Three years and six months after dropping $10,000 on Going Broke, a clean female 4WD Nissan Pathfinder, we happily, I mean sadly, no I really do mean happily, accepted Carmax's $1500 offer. South Florida may well be her final resting place. The premature grave was due...
Hawaii and the Asheville Six
Having more time than anticipated after hammering through the last batch of six highpoints we realised that the next six were still en route to Florida and all surrounding the city of Asheville, North Carolina. There was no excuse that during our week with a good...
Six in the East plus Utah
Our love, (wait, did I say love!) for driving is once again taking us on a repeat route up towards Massachusetts, this time to bag more of those ridiculous state highpoints. Last time we were out this way we skipped six on the east coast as we were over driving,...
Fall on the San Juan Skyway
We are both feeling very fortunate to have gone from hiking the amazingly scenic John Muir Trail in California's Sierras straight to Durango and the San Juan Mountains of Southwest Colorado. Even better was lucking out on some typical Colorado weather for possibly the...
Utah and its Awesome Foursome
Seeming like an extension of Arizona and the Grand Canyon we drove Going Broke diagonally northeast across Utah, starting in the very livable city of St George (with fond memories of a brutal Ironman here back in 2009), followed by Zion, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands,...
One of the Seven Natural Wonders, the Grand Canyon
High on Andrea’s bucket list, the week we spent in the Grand Canyon area was a mixture of tourist chaos and solitude, totally dependent on whether we were located at the top of the canyon rim or in the depths of the canyon floor. The highlight definitely being our 3...
Mt Whitney Ascent
Due to not being equipped to go beyond the Camp Muir hut on Rainier I made it a priority to stand on top of Mt Whitney in California’s Sierra Nevada range, the largest mountain in the lower 48 states. Requiring a wilderness permit for both the day hike and the...
Yosemite, a climber’s paradise
Would the hordes of other tourists spoil our party or would this turn out to be one of America's best National Parks? The latter ran true with Yosemite taking us on an adventure that ensured we will return to experience a second chapter. From forest fires to a bone...
Pacific Coast Highway with ‘Going Broke’
Beginning in Astoria on the northern coast of Oregon and ending in Morro Bay, 230 miles south of San Francisco, we were filled with visions of dramatic coastlines and cute little seaside towns so we loaded up 'Going Broke' and headed south. This was not going to be a...
Rainier!
This was my second visit and Andrea’s first to this amazing National Park a few hours south of Seattle. We both agreed this is our favorite US national park, at least during this time of year, with meadows full of bright and colorful wild flowers, perfectly flat...
Vancouver and the Island
Our departure from Alaska meant our arrival back in British Columbia, and with a late night ferry into Port Hardy we were excited to see what lay ahead in Vancouver Island and visiting our friends in Vancouver. We had a week to make our way along the 290 miles of...
The Inside Passage
We have now driven over 10,000 miles since starting our US road trip in Morehead, KY on May 24th. Our return journey from Alaska back to Canada and the lower 48 could be completed a few different ways, either by more driving or utilizing the Inside Passage ferry...
The Dalton Highway, AKA Haul Road
What could be more fun than a thousand mile round trip from Fairbanks, across the Arctic Circle, over the Brooks mountain range, through 200 miles of North Slope tundra, and up into the industrial town of Deadhorse, gateway to the Prudhoe Bay oilfields. Again, not...
Bears, bears, bears
I had two nature encounters I didn’t want Andrea and I to miss out on whilst in the northern hemisphere, watching brown bears feasting on salmon as they migrate back into fresh water to spawn, and experiencing polar bears in their natural habitat. The first became...
The Alaska Highway
Beginning at mile 0 in Dawson Creek, British Columbia and ending in Delta Junction, Alaska at historical mile 1422, this amazing road trip through British Columbia, Yukon Territories and into the mining heart of Alaska took us six days to complete. We detoured onto...
The Canadian Rockies
The Canadian Rockies are a continuation of the American Rocky Mountains, stretching up to the Liard river in northern British Columbia. We planned on spending time in the various national parks en route, utilizing the scenic Bow Valley Parkway and Icefields Parkway to...
Glacier National Park
After a brief one night stay in Victor, Idaho we made it to another new state for both of us. Our goal was Glacier National Park, before crossing over the border into Alberta, Canada. Not sure Andrea was looking forward to Glacier too much after scaring herself stupid...
Yogi’s Yellowstone
Continuing on our westerly heading through the Black Hills towards Wyoming, our first stop was Devil's Tower NM, not far over the state line and only a minor detour from I-90. We weren’t planning on visiting National Monuments on this trip, but this one was so close...
Badlands and Mt Rushmore
Not somewhere either of us had really thought about visiting but whilst planning our route it became apparent that we would pass through the southern part of the two Dakotas en route to Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park. Outside magazine ran an article on the...
The Day our Luck ran out
We assumed that we would have a few weeks to explore the north of Peru so we booked a flight from Lima to Fort Lauderdale a few months ago on the cheap and nasty Spirit Airlines – we actually exhausted all of our time in Ecuador to spend time with my family so getting...
Volcano Bagging
With an abundance of relatively easily accessible peaks situated down Avenida de los Volcanes, Ecuador is a mountaineering heaven. The likes of Tungurahua, Sangay and Reventador are off-limits due to volcanic activity but it still left a variety of different...
Tip Top III
Months before our departure, I researched as many boats as possible that spend between three and fifteen days island hopping through the archipelago. The costs were ranging from the high hundreds of Dollars to the high thousands. We both agreed out budget was around...
Galápagos, Las Islas Encantadas
I’d always dreamed of visiting the Galápagos Islands since my first visit to Ecuador in 1980, at the ripe old age of twelve. More than twenty years ago my grandparents had spent a week on a cruise and talked about how amazing the islands were, but during both of my...
Quito, feels like home!
Andrea and I finally arrived in Quito some five hours after crossing the border at Tulcan. We had reserved a single night at Boutiquito, a new and trendy hostel, if not a little on the expensive side, before heading over to Cumbaya in the east of Quito to see my aunt,...
