Over the past 3 years while TR was in Physical Therapy school, we were only allotted so many days off for travel- Christmas break, spring break, etc. We pride ourselves on being able to squeeze as much adventure as possible out of one “vacation”.
For example, Spring Break of 2018 we hit the road as soon TR finished his last test that Friday, we drove from Texas to Tennessee to run a trail half Saturday morning, drove up to Indy afterwards to run the Shamrock Half Sunday. On Monday we hit the road again with adventures in Knoxville, then on to North Carolina exploring the entire coast on our way to finish up spring break with a half in Virginia the following Saturday. As soon as that race was over we began the 20+ hour drive back to Texas in order for TR to be back in class Monday morning.
Another good example of us packing as much adventure into a set amount of days off from school as possible was our one year anniversary celebration in 2019. We had a small window between TR’s summer session ending and fall semester beginning but managed to squeeze in a sunrise at Grand Canyon, discovered an amazing hidden gem June Lake, CA, ran a 50k trail ultra in Lake Tahoe, explored Yosemite including summiting the cables at Half Dome on our actual anniversary. As we made our way back towards Texas we adventured through Utah including Moab, Zion, and Bryce Canyon, saw a concert at Red Rocks in Denver with dear friends, and rounded out the trip with a half marathon in Nebraska to knock another state off the list. Some people prefer to get to one place and stay there for the duration of their vacation, but we would much rather see a little bit of lots of things – and this was definitely one of our favorite big adventures to date! It was such a grand adventure that we had to split the youtube video into 2 parts!
Some of our other favorite destinations along the way include: (click for video)
Acadia National Park – Maine
Rocky Mountain National Park – Estes Park, CO
Flagstaff/Sedona – Arizona
San Juan Islands – Washington