To be honest, I had never heard of Dunn’s River Falls prior to our Jamaica trip. But when I heard about the number one tourist destination that was even featured in a James Bond film, I did my homework (watched Dr. No) and decided that it was worth a visit.
Continuing our day trip hiking adventures, we visited the Bennett Hill Preserve in upstate New York on a gorgeous crisp fall day. The leaves were just starting to change for autumn, gently padding the path, and the sun was shining brightly. It was a perfect day.
Nestled in the bustling harbor of Baltimore, lies the National Aquarium. In a city known mostly for its crime and violence à la HBO’s The Wire, this place is truly a pearl, showing visitors the other side of Baltimore.
We visited the Winn Preserve on a perfect day. The temperature was in the mid-60s, the air was crisp, the sun was shining, and the leaves were changing color all around us. It was also the first time our son put his boots on the ground and “hiked” on the trail with us! Okay, so he didn’t hike the whole thing, but he did walk a stretch of the trail and loved every second!
The Keleher Preserve is a conservation area in the town of New Scotland that is managed by the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy. This is a larger preserve, with over 440 acres and offers miles of hiking trails with some overlooks of the city of Albany. We got a chance to hike around this gorgeous spot to take in the final days of summer. We even spied some leaves already starting to change color on us!
I’ve been hearing about Letchworth State Park for years now. “It’s the Grand Canyon of the East,” my husband has said to me on numerous occasions. Though I always kept it in mind, my need to visit this state park was cemented in 2015 when it was voted by USA Today readers as THE best state park in the United States. For Labor Day weekend, we traveled to western New York and finally decided to make a day at Letchworth. I must say, it lived up to all the hype!
The journey up to North Point is a beautiful one. We decided to hike to this overlook with our one year old son and had a wonderful time! With multiple views along the way, the trail gently slopes up, giving you a lot of level areas and allowing you to catch your breath as you make your way to the top. This was our first real hike since our son was born, and it was the best way to get ourselves back into hiking shape!
I have always thought that sunrises were more magical than sunsets. Don’t get me wrong, sunsets are beautiful. I just find sunrises even more so. Sunrises give me an optimism and hopefulness that I don’t find anywhere else. They offer the promise of a new day and all the endless possibilities that accompany it. Sunrises on vacation, when you know that you don’t have to go to work, are the best.
That’s why when we visited Acadia National Park, we knew that we had to see the sunrise from Cadillac Mountain, the highest point on all the east coast United States.
The Lisha Kill Preserve is a beautiful place, and echoes the feeling I had while traipsing though the Black Forest in Germany. The forests here consist of tall, dark trees and soft pine needles trail riddled with roots to walk on. It’s simply magical.
Nestled within downtown Los Angeles is the natural wonder, the La Brea Tar Pits. For tens of thousands of years, tar has been seeping up in the ground here claiming the lives of poor, unknowing creatures and preserving them in wonderful condition for us to “enjoy” today. These remains were discovered in the early 1900s when the area was mined for asphalt. Oddly enough, “La Brea” actually means “the pitch (or tar)” in Spanish so The La Brea Tar Pits translates into the the tar tar pits.