How Green Is My Ski Slope: Or, Summer in Vail

More Colorado: Visit to Vail and Rafting Having spent three fantastic days at Rocky Mountain National Park, it was time to move on, albeit with a heavy heart. Despite our pebbly-floored tent, Brian could easily have spent a week or more here exploring the parks proliferation of wilderness trails. But he had promised Sylvia a chance to see one of […]

Shock, Sorrow…And Hope…for Our Lady of Paris

Notre Dame Cathedral Burns Just Eight Months After We Visited *BecauseItzThere was planning to run the third in a series of posts about our preparations for Patagonia. However, in light of the tragic events in France — and a place which we feel oddly connected to — we decided that can wait a bit.* By now almost everyone who has […]

The Great Valley

The Great Shenandoah Trip Part I Sometimes a bit of serendipity falls upon one disguised as bad luck. For example…Last week we were supposed to go away for a weekend trip, which would have been the subject of this blog post. Unfortunately, Sylvia’s business commitments prevented this from happening. In search of something to write about, site Editor Brian found […]

The Grand Canyon’s Grand Front Door

Glen Canyon, AZ While the far-reaching views from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon may be the most enigmatic and spectacular, there is a particularly intimate magic to being inside the canyon itself. One cannot really know the place without being underneath its shadowy depths. But there’s a rub…there’s still no easy way into the canyon. The advent of […]

King Charles Town

Charleston, SC Part II After visiting Fort Moultrie Sylvia made Brian swear not to visit any more forts or historical sites for the remainder of the trip. Brian grudgingly agreed. However, this would not really be possible since Charleston  — Travel and Leisure Magazine’s ‘World’s Best City” in 2016 — basically is one gigantic historical site. With apologies to the […]

A Weekend of Coastal Fortification in Charleston, SC

Charleston, South Carolina ***Though BecauseItzThere is mostly a hiking blog, from time to time we will showcase travel of other sorts here, especially when it related to the outdoors, nature and history. As we’ve been hitting the mountains a lot lately, including two weeks of it in Europe, it was only a matter of time before Sylvia shouted “Enough” and […]

Paris: If We Had To Do It Over…

Paris: L’Essons L’Earned, or What We Learned NOT to Do from Four Days in the City of Light. **Becauseitzthere is typically a hiking and outdoor adventure blog. But from time to time we will feature other sorts of travel and leisure on these pages. In other words…fu fu travel. And it don’t get no more […]