Days not Homeless: 5 Years, 341 Days ...and loving every second of this alpine adventure!
Did summiting Denali back in 2003 subconsciously set this somewhat crazy adventure into gear? I’ll never know but what I was hoping for is that this would be the end, the finale, the completion, the conclusion, whatever… of bagging the highest point in all 50 of the...
After what felt like an eternity it was a random email from a good friend in the US that prompted a plan of attack for the remaining 8 state highpoints. Unfortunately they were spread far and wide and included four that required some level of technique and multiple...
Even being stuck in Chacos sandals with only 9 1/2 toes wasn't enough of a deterrent in tagging three more pathetically easy highpoints! Although heading out of south Florida towards Kentucky was the right direction they all still required significant detours; a waste...
Colorado would make an ideal training venue for the short seven weeks prior to departing for Mount Everest, the rockies reaching up above 14,000 feet whilst offering limitless opportunities for winter hiking, snowshoeing, cross country skiing and fatbiking. With...
This has to be one of our top multi-day hikes. For sheer beauty the Maroon Bells 4 pass loop has it all. Not too long; coming in at 29 miles, a little hilly; the total ascent around 7,500ft, and right on the doorstep of Aspen and Snowmass. If it wasn't for a good...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
With the likes of Forester, Glen and Pinchot passes behind us we assumed that the second half of the John Muir Trail would be plain sailing - wrongly assumed that is! The entire 220 plus miles are continuously up and down. In fact, for us the most difficult and...
Typically time flew by and before we knew it we were sitting having Chinese, excellent Chinese at that, in Lone Pine, California the evening before our big departure. Going Broke, our SUV, was patiently waiting for us at Mammoth Airport and all we had with us was what...
It wasn't until our short time spent in Yosemite National Park a couple of years ago, then hearing from a friend how amazing a hike the 220 mile John Muir Trail actually is that we started thinking that this sounded right up our alley. The seed was set, the biggest...
Continuing on from an out-of-the-way Iowa our route took a very direct west towards the Dakotas. We had driven this same road 3 years earlier and had been close to the places we were now revisiting for our state highpoint goal - just wish this had been on the agenda...
An early exit from the Tour Divide bike race allowed us to take a non-direct route from Kentucky to our month long housesitting job in Bozeman, Montana. It would also enable Andrea to complete her quest to visit all fifty states, an achievement that took almost 44...
Sitting here writing this I'm still kicking myself for not currently being part of the Tour Divide 2017 mountain bike ride! Then I look down at the swelling and feel the tingling in the fingers on my right hand. Then I stand up and feel the grating along the achilles...
Continuing on from a successful Spring hike to the summit of Colorado's Mt Elbert we went back and forth between either Utah or Arizona as the next highpoint. Utah's Kings Peak, it turned out had a much better approach from the north and would have ended up being a 5...
Since banging out four of the Northeastern Highpoints almost a year ago the desire had returned to knock off a few more. Hip resurfacing surgery and other travel plans stood in the way for ten months bringing us to now. Once again the decision to head out west was an...
With a good amount of trepidation we headed north towards Madison, Wisconsin, on this occasion for my second bout of hip surgery. My decision to go ahead with further surgery was prompted by the rapid decline of my right hip - hiking was resulting in more and more...
Completing the seven continental highpoints, or 7 Summits as they are commonly called, is still on hold for financial and fitness reasons. Also, with only the big price tag mountains of Everest and Vinson remaining there needed to be an interim goal that was...
Yes, we know it’s been a long time since we’ve sent out a blog, and no, we didn’t move to Montana either. In fact a few weeks ago we once again left Andrea’s family in Kentucky and headed north in our trusted steed, Going Broke. After spending a few days with friends...
With Ayutthaya being only an hour north of Bangkok it made sense to spend our last couple of nights there exploring the ancient temples. Once upon a time it was the capital of the Kingdom of Siam and very prosperous, until that is... the Burmese destroyed much of it....
Why did it take so long for us to make it to Thailand? What an amazing country, clearly with lots of places to explore - on this fifteen day trip we'd only have time for visiting Bangkok, Ayutthaya, and a couple of the many islands. Not sure of the reason but...
For me this was the highlight of an amazingly diverse country. The countless different tribes of the Omo Valley in the south of Ethiopia were unique, rich in culture, colourful, and often very extreme. Also very spoilt by the influx of tourism, of which we were...
A jeep adventure very similar to the Bolivian salt flats, only instead of being around 4000m in altitude this three day trip was often below sea level. The arid land we would explore was known as the Danakil Desert and covers almost 140,000 square kms of northeast...
Having been on the travel radar for some time, a good friend of mine from Everest in 2005 accompanied me on this adventure to Ethiopia, an amazing and culturally rich country. After a couple of days in Addis Ababa and completing Africa's largest 10km running race, the...
Did summiting Denali back in 2003 subconsciously set this somewhat crazy adventure into gear? I’ll never know but what I was hoping for is that this would be the end, the finale, the completion, the conclusion, whatever… of bagging the highest point in all 50 of the...
This trip went from being primarily about Seville, a city that we'd wanted to visit for some time, to Granada, Malaga, Cordoba, Cadiz, and even Gibraltar. We had no idea what we could knock off in a little over two weeks but decided that we would just keep on driving...
No idea why it had taken us so long to make it to Egypt but we're already raring to go back! This occasion was just a week long vacation to get us away from the cold of the Alps and for me to enjoy (if there is any enjoyment!) recovering from hip replacement surgery....
After what felt like an eternity it was a random email from a good friend in the US that prompted a plan of attack for the remaining 8 state highpoints. Unfortunately they were spread far and wide and included four that required some level of technique and multiple...
Encouraged by feedback from a friend that had recently completed this 'hilly' ride through the French Alps we thought, why not, that sounds right up our street. Officially starting on Lac Leman in Geneva we would cut it short slightly by cycling almost from our front...
It took us a long time to make it to Norway, but Oh was it worth it. The only plan we had before leaving on our long drive north from Chamonix was to meet friends in Senja for some ski touring. We just winged everything else and it worked a charm. The car was rammed...
With 2024 providing a brief glimpse into ski touring in Arctic Norway there was no way it wouldn't become a yearly ritual. Senja was fun but the Lyngen Alps to the north east of Tromso was destined to be an epic adventure. The crowd was pretty much the same; mostly...
Now that I had no desire to return to the US where I had spent far too many years where was I going to go whilst Andrea returned home? The most logical countries were Arabic speaking as they don't appeal to her! I had briefly looked at Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi...
Unable to take a rental car into Albania on a prior roadtrip through Europe we made it a mission to discover what would turn out to be a gem, and not one of those expensive gems! EasyJet supplied the direct flight from Geneva to Tirana, public transport was dirt...
Not quite what we had planned regarding a big Swedish adventure, our 3 week Kungsleden hike turning into a city break in Stockholm. Oh well, it was still fun, and we got to explore another scenic European city. With EasyJet flying the dirt cheap route directly from...
The thought of travelling for two days to visit family in New Zealand without adding on a South Pacific island trip was now only a thought! After spending a little over a week in Niue on our previous trip where would we go this time? Whilst my mum had already been to...
With a few hundred Euros in TAP Portugal credit and no real idea of where to go that didn't involve connections and long flights we decided to just head somewhere warm and that we'd never been to before. The Algarve sounded like that destination. Unfortunately the...
Approaching Greenland ice shelf from the air was humbling, the size of the glaciers tumbling into the sea, the iceberg’s with their turquoise underwater colours, the sheer expanse… and we were barely north of Greenland's narrowest point - there was a hell of a lot...
So here it is, time for another fairly long bike-packing adventure following the length of the mighty Rhine river. The other getaways I was toying with were either a north south traverse of Iceland on foot or a photography shoot in the Faroe Islands - for both it was...
Over eighty days of skiing under my belt, it was time for Andrea and I to head to warmer climates. We had spent some time in the French island of Corsica a couple of years ago and now it was time for the Italian island of Sardinia. We had zero plans; just the desire...
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