Owning a Jeep sounded like a nice idea. I knew about the “Jeep wave” and it seemed, from the outside, like the Jeep community was full of wonderful people who all got along and enjoyed their vehicles and didn’t squabble all that much. Kind of like the Volkswagen community, I thought, except with more...
Sometimes, the best things come in pairs--like yourself and your significant other, or your partnered friends who are out at a different park each weekend, or even, perhaps, your parents. I put together this list of car-camping gear that's best enjoyed with your favorite person just in time for Valentine's Day. ...
When we car camp, we don't take a fancy chuck box or anything like that. Instead, our "kitchen box" consists of a single 18-gallon storage tote. The tote is also really easy to pack for a trip, since the kitchen box isn't really touched outside of camping. We give it a...
Many people think it's too cold for outdoor adventures in the winter, but there's a very true phrase you'll hear over and over again from enthusiasts: "there's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes". As far as I can tell, it's some kind of Scandinavian proverb, although the first time I...
First Day Hikes are actually part of an initiative by US State Parks, but we didn’t make it to one of Ohio’s State Parks on January 1st… in fact, we didn’t make it out of the house on January 1st. Instead, both my son, P, and I had what we believe was a mild...
Ask me what my favorite trail in Cuyahoga Valley National Park is, and I'll probably say it's The Ledges. Located in the Virginia Kendall area of CVNP, The Ledges is probably the favorite trail of many people -- it's wildly popular, but for good reason: it's a very interesting trail, with lots of...
Buying clothing and gear for kids is tough, for a few reasons. For starters, kids grow about six inches every other day, so nothing fits longer than a week at a time. Secondly, decent clothing and outdoor gear is expensive, and kids don’t always take the best care of their things, so they end...
How can you get kids outside when you're quarantining due to the coronavirus? This past weekend, I found myself in that exact situation. My son developed a cough last Monday and spent the week home from school. After a few days, my ex-husband and I conceded the cough wasn't going anywhere, and...
When my Scouts were working on their Wolf rank, we built our first hiking kits in leftover mint tins. Now that my Scouts were a bit older, I thought we should move on to a larger, sturdier first-aid kit (for the larger, sturdier amounts of trouble they can get themselves into)....
Bradley Woods is a 795-acre swamp forest hidden away on the border of Westlake, OH and North Olmsted, OH. Like a lot of places in northeast Ohio, it's also the site of an old sandstone quarry (you can't throw a rock without hitting an old sandstone quarry here--and any rock you find to...
