Summer Adventuring

Summer is the best time for adventures - our favorite thing to do is hop in the car and take off for a few days. Once we took a trip to Colorado wine country; another time we explored Moab and the Grand Canyon. I love road trips (especially when I'm the passenger!) and summer is the perfect time to take a few. We put together a list of our road trip essentials - perfect for summer adventuring.

1. The best CD for long, relaxed drives
2. A water bottle, to fill up wherever you stop
3. I just bought these sunglasses for the summer, and I'm obsessed. (And, if you're a glasses or contact lens wearer, like we both are, prescription sunglasses are great for traveling and adventuring)
4. A journal so you remember everything
5. Rubber flip flops - easy to throw on for exploring and even easier to kick off in the car
6. A swim suit, for those times you find yourself by the ocean or a lake or a hot spring (top + bottom)
7. SNACKS! The best part of any road trip
8. A big bag that you can throw everything in and take with you when you go exploring
9. A Leatherman...for everything
10. Camera (and phone!) for taking pictures of anything and everything you see and do

Where are you off to this summer?! We went on our annual adventure trip earlier this month and we're heading east to visit family in July....

5 Camping Essentials for the Non-Camper

Last June we started a camping tradition: we would pick a starting point, camp there for a couple of nights and then go wherever we felt like from there.

It started by accident; last spring we decided to go to Moab, Utah to camp for two nights. We hiked during the day and sat by the campfire at night and we were having a great time so we decided to continue on to the Grand Canyon. After two days there, we made our way back to Colorado via Mesa Verde where we spent our last night. Last year's trip was one of our favorite trips of all time (we both wrote about it here) and now we're looking forward to our second annual spontaneous camp trip.

The kicker is: I didn't grow up camping and prior to last year's trip, I had a self-imposed camping limit of two nights (now it's up to five!). I always thought that I would prefer to stay in a hotel with down comforters and hot showers, but camping can be a great, inexpensive way to explore new areas. Here are a few things that I like to bring with me to stretch a two day trip into a five day trip: