Mom to Ava and Hazel, partner to Dan. Commercial operations leader. Passionate about gardening. Likes a good policy debate. History nerd. Appreciates good design (my husband would say I tend to prioritize form over function...). Excited about this year, and about our national park system, America's "best idea" according to writer Wallace Stegnar.
This trip might best be summed up by our 26th President's father, Theodore Roosevelt Sr, who said... "Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster."
Here's to not being an oyster!
I wrote this piece back in April, but never posted it. I think I kept waiting for additional “ah-ha” moments to strike before I shared what we learned on this trip. But the longer I wait, the more these lessons seem relevant. Perhaps there will be another round of insights that strike our family in the coming months, but this will do for now. Wishing all...
Hello blog! It has been awhile since I sat down to write, but today deserved a new post. Today we said goodbye to Moby, our snug home of the past year. We never planned to keep Moby. Traveling by RV was never a part of our family travel playbook. We have always driven or flown to a destination, staying in a hotel or with family and friends...
The Muir-N-Slager adventure officially concluded on April 24. The RV traveling portion of our life over. We pulled into our driveway around 3:00 in the afternoon, tired from a long drive, and delighted to see our home. Our renter of these past 10 months graciously offered to move out a week before the lease was officially up, and we took him up on...
This is it folks, the answer to the question we are asked most often: “which park was your favorite.” I’ll cut to the chase and tell you that we didn’t have one favorite park – at least not one that all family members agreed on. The best we could do was create favorite park categories where we had a high degree of family alignment. After a year in the...
Hello blog followers! I have missed writing this blog – missed mentally making note of our travels to share with you. I have a few blog posts left in me before we officially hang up our sabbatical. I plan to write the post everyone keeps asking about (which park was our favorite) and I may publish a post I wrote called “Cousin Eddie.” If you have...
I love to read, but sometimes I forget how much I love it, inundated as I normally tend to be with the details of a busy life. Many weeks, before this trip, my reading would consist of the NYT/WSJ in the morning and occasionally some type of business or other improvement book in the evening. And business books are nothing if not sleep inducing. On more...
Well friends, we hate to say it, but COVID-19 has ground our trip to a halt – like every other endeavor it seems. When COVID first reared its ugly head, we did what you did – watch with semi-detached dread as China went into lock down. As it progressed, we tried to behave responsibly through social distancing and obsessive handwashing. But at...
I drafted this post a few weeks ago intending to publish it in a lull between parks. But since many of us are sequestered in our relative homes I thought a few new recipes might be welcomed! The Muir-N-Slager clan is doing fine. We’ve made some schedule changes to avoid population centers but we are trucking along. I hope all of you are taking care and getting...
Well folks, today is March 3, Super Tuesday is upon us. I have done my level best to keep this blog apolitical – after all this is a family-centric blog and there are days when our politics don’t feel entirely suitable for families. But as we gear up for what will likely be a highly partisan election cycle, I would like to offer up what I hope is a nonpartisan...
According to Dan, I have a thing for deserts. Apparently, every time we enter one, I express my admiration in one way or another. I am not sure this is universally true – I don’t really want to live in a desert – but I sure did like Saguaro. Saguaro (sa-WAR-row) National Park acts like a pair of parentheses embracing the east and west sides of...