Thoughts around the holidays

We're a few days shy of 2020 and I felt like blogging a bit on this slow Friday morning. How's your holiday season been treating you? Hopefully it's been calm, cozy, and you've been able to be present with the people you love. I'm especially lucky to have some time off, as the automotive industry e…

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Backpacking Great Basin National Park: Our first long day in Nevada's wilderness

Our phones' alarms rang loud far before sunrise and we gathered all of our gear before heading downstairs to the hotel lobby for breakfast.  We had spent the night at a Ramada in Provo, Utah where we slept two to a bed. With less than five hours of sound shut-eye, I was exhausted and devoured as much coffee, pint…

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An in-flight Packers game

The first Packers game of the year just so happened to be on my flight out to Nevada. Here's the first blog post from my backpacking trip to Great Basin National Park.  Fighting the start of rush hour traffic and the (hopefully) tail end of a nasty cold that sprung on me Labor Day, I arrived at the airport about …

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Four days till Nevada

Greetings, it's been a minute!  August and all of its busyness is gone while the fresh month of September has now arrived. Anywho, there's an adventure on the horizon soon! Crunch time begins in less than a week I'll be hopping off the plane with three of my best friends in Salt Lake City to begin a three…

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A tribute to the original "Adventure Mobile"

At the start of June, I was doing an oil change underneath my beloved 233,000-mile"Adventure Mobile." On my back, I looked up and noticed a catastrophic amount of rust on the frame, so bad I could put my entire hand through it. My heart plummeted. I knew that was it. The time had come, and for the sake of s…

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Practicing LNT with grey water

Whenever I'm outdoors, I strive to abide by Leave No Trace practices. It's so, so, so  important to take care of our big backyard and keep our public lands clean. To me, walking into a campsite where there's evidence someone has clearly stayed there before you is a cringe-worthy feeling. Taking actions, bo…

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What is the Land and Water Conservation Fund and why is it so important?

Let's talk about the LWCF because it's critical for our public lands.  Established by congress in 1964, the Land and Water Conservation Fund helps preserve and safeguard special places of wilderness. If you've been reading my blog for a while now, you may know I'm a huge, passionate advocate for publi…

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One year with Coleman's $49 Flatwoods II tent

One year ago, I took a gamble and bought a cheap tent at Target.  I was heading north to spend four days at Amnicon Falls and Pattison State Parks located in Superior, Wisconsin and an ear-shot from Duluth, Minnesota. and was tired of using my beloved, trusty backpacking tent for car camping. I wanted a simple tent f…

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My favorite morning ritual at the campsite

One of the greatest perks of a home-based job is having time in the morning to sit down and blog for a bit before jumping into my busy workday.  Usually this happens right as I pour my first mug of coffee out of the pot, crack open a window to let the fresh Shorewood air in, and let the creative side of my brain star…

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A guide to visiting Lake Kegonsa State Park

Lake Kegonsa State Park is a hidden gem worth traveling to. Wisconsin's greater Madison area is home to a splendid group of state park properties scattered across Dane county and beyond. Within an hour of the capital are the big ones like Devil's Lake, Blue Mound, and Governor Dodge. Then there are the hidden g…

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Taking the ferry to Rock Island State Park

Located at the very tip-top of the Door County peninsula, Rock Island State Park is an escape into a unique kind of wilderness that requires a bit of work to get to. So you want to explore the most remote state park Wisconsin has to offer? Fear not, eager backpacker, here's everything you need to know to plan the …

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It's time to check in

Greetings and welcome to May! So it's clearly been a hot minute since I've blogged. But after a solid morning community meditation that steered me towards reflecting and focusing on gratitude, I've found some inspiration to get back at it with a little update. Going forth I'm aiming to be more transpa…

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My travel blog has turned 100,000!

My blog just hit an important milestone as it surpassed 100,000 pageviews! I originally launched my blog in December of 2010 as www.robbyaroundtheworld.com, before leaving on a jet plane to live in Saigon, Vietnam during my junior year of college. The blog's original purpose was for two things. First was to keep …

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Backpacking Great Sand Dunes National Park: Sunrise beneath the ponderosa pines

An early October sunrise greeted us as we unzipped and crawled out of the tent on Sunday morning.  While temperatures weren't as frigid like the numbers we experienced in the exposed dune field, it was still chilly with remnants of frost seen about in this subalpine forest that surrounded us. There's something…

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Backpacking Great Sand Dunes National Park: Wandering directionless into the wilderness

We made it through our first night camped out in the dunefield though temperatures dropped sharply as soon as the sun completely dove past the horizon.  The eeriest thing throughout the night was the silence, hearing only the routine slowly building strong gusts of wind that barreled down from the top of the tall dune…

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