Hiking, web development, best practices, and general awesomeness
Every time a winter storm rolls through the mountains outside of Phoenix, I think about taking the kids out to experience what winter is really like. They loved the few snowy adventures we've had, trudging through the white stuff and making angels and stuffing frozen handfuls of water into their…
On New Year's Eve a storm rolled across central Arizona. In Phoenix, the valley of the sun, we saw intermittent rain under gloomy skies, though the mountains surrounding our valley were dusted by a more wintery mix. When I woke up on the new year and saw white on the upper portions of Superstition…
Trying to hide my nervousness I glanced around at the snowy trees and hills around us. Emily and I were driving up M-26 towards Atlantic Mine, one of the most notorious stretches of winter roads this side of the Mackinaw. Sputtering snow and strong winds cut down our visibility and kept our…
Emily and I pored over her ten-year-old McNally Atlas looking for a good snowshoe destination. The wind howled outside the small Ontonagon house as I checked the clock out of the corner of my eye. It was still early in the afternoon, with hours of daylight left in the snowy February day, but I still…
Snow plummeted from the sky. The large lake-formed flakes didn't swirl or drift like normal, like they were designed to do. They cut through the woods on a stiff breeze and tumbled onto the leaf-covered ground. At first the flakes melted quickly on the warm ground. Then, steadily, a thin white…
Cliff Lake is a small body of water nestled against the southern flanks of Mt. Benison, located halfway between Big Bay and Skanee. There are two main routes to Cliff Lake: follow Cliff River north from the Northwestern Road past Forty Foot Falls or break off of Erick's Road where it meets Little…
Katie and I woke up at a small Ishpeming motel to find the ground covered in snow. This was more than a little surprising, as it was the second week of May, but the Upper Peninsula likes to misbehave in the late spring. We packed up the car with Logan and headed west on US-41 towards the Peshekee…
On several adventures east of Skanee, MI during the summer of 2008 I noticed a large mountain near the mouth of the Huron River. It wasn't until I started looking at geocaching websites for interesting hiking spots that I learned its name, Bald Mountain, or noticed that it was the easternmost point…