Blog posts from USA Travel
Pacific Northwest, June 2022: Oregon waterfalls

Pacific Northwest, June 2022: Oregon waterfalls

With an open afternoon and good weather we headed south out of the Willamette Valley to Silver Falls State Park to do some hiking. We'd been there on a summer trip in 2016, and we were hoping that...

Pacific Northwest, June 2022: introduction

Pacific Northwest, June 2022: introduction

Oregon and Washington are amongst our most visited US states, and with good reason — they have an wide range of natural beauty, plus great food scenes including amazing wineries and breweries....

Hilton Head Island, May 2022

Hilton Head Island, May 2022

For my birthday weekend we happily accepted an invitation to stay at our friend's house in Hilton Head Island, SC. Somehow we'd never been here before, and the amount of trees and hidden development...

Quick trip to Washington, D.C.

Quick trip to Washington, D.C.

Nine days before we were set to leave for Spain, Leandra grabbed our passports out of the safe to book our train tickets from Madrid to Valencia, causing her to discover that my passport had expired...

NC mountains, April 2022: food & drink

NC mountains, April 2022: food & drink

Over the course of the week we tried a number of breweries and restaurants in the NC mountains. April 10 Oskar Blues, Brevard - we'd been here previously so we knew they had lots of parking and a...

NC mountains, April 2022: waterfalls

NC mountains, April 2022: waterfalls

During our week in the mountains we made sure to seek out several waterfalls that we hadn't yet visited. On a beautiful Sunday we focused our effort along Forest Rd 475, hitting the following: Cove...

Week in Florida: Eat + Drink

Week in Florida: Eat + Drink

Other Breweries Good Liquid Brewing - We originally planned to go to the South Manatee location, but at the last minute we noticed their newish location in Sarasota that was a little easier to get...

Week in Florida: Oyster shucking

Week in Florida: Oyster shucking

After returning from our afternoon in St. Pete - my Dad informed me they had purchased 2 dozen oysters from Detwiler's! I had him pour me a glass of champagne and got started shucking. We ate them...

Week in Florida: Daytrip to St. Pete

Week in Florida: Daytrip to St. Pete

We started our afternoon in the Edge district with cuban sandwiches at Bodega. We ordered at the outdoor window and grabbed an open table inside. We were so hungry we ate everything before thinking...

2021 Year in Review

2021 Year in Review

Previous years-in-review – 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 2021 was another slow(er) travel year - no international travel, but following our vaccinations we...

Chicago, December 2021

Chicago, December 2021

A trip to meet up with Leandra's sister and family in early November fell apart, so we decided to fly up to Chicago for a long weekend in December. Since we also had a free Hilton night we needed to...

Longwood Gardens

Longwood Gardens

I've long wanted to visit Longwood Gardens, one of the most well-known gardens on the US east coast famous for its water features and formal gardens. Since we would be driving (relatively)...

New England, October 2021: Maine food & drink

New England, October 2021: Maine food & drink

When I was planning the Maine part of the trip I knew we would have to visit Allagash, but I also stumbled across the large list of sours and dark beers at Barreled Souls Brewing -- definitely a...

New England, October 2021: Maine sights

New England, October 2021: Maine sights

Over our 2.5 days along the Maine coast we explored a few different areas. On the drive to Portland we stopped at the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. The 1 mile loop was a nice place to...

Our Itinerary

2024 Trips

San Diego, CA (Jan)
Sarasota, FL (Feb)
Valencia, Spain (Mar)
Mallorca (Apr)
Croatia (May)
Faroe Islands (Aug)
London, UK (Sept)
Bari, Italy (Sept)
Rome, Italy (Oct)
Frankfurt, Germany (Oct)

2022 Trips

Florida (Feb)
NC Mountains (Apr)
Washington DC (Apr)
Valencia, Spain (May)
Hilton Head, SC (May)
Pacific NW (Jun)
Long Island (Jul)
Florida (Sept)
Chicago (Sept)
Poland (Sept)
NC Mountains (Nov)
Euro Xmas Markets (Dec)