BIG Game Night

August 10, 2022.Reading time 15 minutes.

It was the event we had all been waiting for…Big Game Night had finally arrived. On Friday night of Gen Con weekend, hundreds of board gamers would unite for a sold-out evening from 8:00 pm to midnight of group tabletop gaming by Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG). A couple days in, we could start to feel […]

A Library of Board Games

August 10, 2022.Reading time 23 minutes.

The Games Library Pass was the best value of play at Gen Con. More than 4,700 games were available to check out over an 8 hour period for only $8.00. Housed in the Indianapolis Colts’ Lucas Oil Stadium, we checked in bright and early on Day 2 at 8:00 am for our pre-registered day passes […]

Gen Con Indy 2022

August 9, 2022.Reading time 21 minutes.

Welcome to Gen Con: the largest tabletop game convention in North America by both attendance and the number of events. At Gen Con 2019, over 70,000 people attended with a similarly impressive crowd of 50,000 in 2022. Derek and I are still relatively new to the scene as we met fellow board gamers who have […]

The Busse Woods Trail

August 1, 2022.Reading time 9 minutes.

The Ned Brown Nature Preserve, more commonly known as Busse Woods, is home to a small herd of elk that roam a 17-acre enclosed pasture of ancient upland forest in Elk Grove Township, IL. The size of the herd has fluctuated since the original herd delivery from Yellowstone National Park in 1925, but a veterinary […]

Copper Harbor Road Trip 2019

July 29, 2022.Reading time 1 minute.

This is a throwback to the late summer of 2019 when we took a road trip to the UP in Copper Harbor, Michigan. I realized that I had never written a blog story about this experience since it was made into a home video at the time. We had a wonderful trip with our friend […]

Raindrops Keep Falling on My Helmet

July 28, 2022.Reading time 10 minutes.

It seemed like a great afternoon for a bike ride. The weather was overcast and cloudy with a cooler 80 degrees compared to some of the really hot July temperatures we have been having lately. We were eager to ride one of our favorite local bike paths just 30 minutes away on the Oak Savannah […]

The John Ball Zoo

July 27, 2022.Reading time 13 minutes.

The John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids, Michigan has been a place of nostalgia for us since we first visited almost a decade ago in 2013. Derek and I have made a lot of memories together going to zoos, aquariums, and wildlife sanctuaries over the years which has evolved into our passion for birding on […]

Where the World Gets a Little Smaller

July 15, 2022.Reading time 8 minutes.

A rainy day on vacation is typically seen as a wasted day, but this wasn’t a typical vacation. On the morning that we had planned to hike, we sat on the back porch before breakfast contemplating the weather forecast. In Hartfield, VA, there is a chance of rain and thunderstorms almost every day this time […]

Hiking Beaverdam Park

July 14, 2022.Reading time 10 minutes.

At the top of our wish list for the River House trip was hiking with the family. Dale and Ginny are avid “nature people” and we wanted to trek a trail with them since we had never before explored the natural environment of Eastern Virginia. With much consideration for the hiking possibilities in the coastal […]

Paddling the Piankatank

July 13, 2022.Reading time 12 minutes.

The Chesapeake Bay is an estuary: a body of water where fresh and saltwater mix. It is the largest of more than 100 estuaries in the United States and the third largest in the world. The Piankatank is one of the many rivers that empties into the Chesapeake from Maryland to Virginia. It is a […]