This morning was so nice, and since I was off work, Brooklynne and I took Halleigh and Kona Bean on a hike around Occannochee "Mountain." The Mountain is more of a big hill, and if you've ever driven south from Durham on I-85, you have probably noticed the large hill with radio towers to the left of the highway as you pass Hillsborough. If you've spent any time in Hillsborough itself, you have probably also noticed the large quary scar that makes a dramatic overlook of the Eno River. Well, that is Occanochee Mountain. The overlook is closed due to the danger of rock slides, but we still got a view good pictures. When we got back to the parking area, we had a nice lunch before heading home. There are a few more pictures after the break too.

In honor of the snow this weekend, I dug up this old clip from the winter of 2004. This was our first winter with Kona Bean and she looks so tiny! This trail was about a half hour drive from our house in MT.

If you don't know this already, my (Miles's) parents have been planning to build a cabin in the Appalachians for the past few years, and they finally closed the deal on 10+ acres near Independence, VA this summer. So, this past weekend, Brooklynne and I decided it was high time to initiate the Travis family mountain getaway by camping on the land for a night. Perhaps we would have stayed longer, but we took Halleigh with us, and we figured a short test-trip would be in order before embarking on a full-fledged back country adventure with an eleven-month-old toddler....

Remember the Vespa I said I made Brooklynne take a picture of? Here it is...

In other news, I also mentioned the Johnny Clark hit a grand slam in the softball game the other night. Well, I didn't realize until today that his grand slam came as one of his four hits while going the cycle in the first game. That's setting the bar kind of high.

Also, click "continue reading" below for two cool pictures from our hike to Ozone Falls during the Great Tennessee Turnout last week.

Unless you started checking this site since September, you probably already know that Brooklynne and I took a backpacking trip with her family this summer. At the time, I was too busy working and preparing for the semester to write a very indepth report of the trip. But Brooklynne has a great aunt who publishes a family newsletter, so I have finally taken the time to write up a short summary of this summer's big event. I will have to send this to Aunt Sally on disc, but until the next issue of the newsletter, I'll include a version of the tale here. Click continue reading to read the story.

We're back from our trip, and alas, I was unable to post while I was away, so there is such a back-log of stuff to write about, I'm throwing it all out and starting from scratch tomorrow. That means the pictures too, although I might eventually have a day when I'm desperate for material and I finally post all the pictures from the hiking trip (roughly 76 over 40 miles of Utah wilderness). For now, enjoy the few thumbs I've thrown up here and email me if you want me to send you some of the real photos.

Brooklynne and I have become great camping partners and we're planning a trip to Utah in August to backpack through the Cache-Wasatch National Forest from Hardware Ranch to Bear Lake. We expect the trip will take about 4 days but we were having trouble knowing for sure until we took our recent trip out west and picked up some maps in Ogden. But for anyone else planning a trip, I found this great website where you can order custom topo maps. The other neat feature is that you can preview the maps online before buying. Since we have our maps already, we haven't tried the service, but if anyone else needs maps for planning a trip, here's the link:

Customized Topo Maps and Aerial Photos - myTopo.com

If you order anything, submit a review here so Brooke and I can know if this is how we should get our maps in the future.