Tag: adventure

Throwing Things Overboard

Talon tells the tale of his first sailing expedition on Flathead Lake: “Last weekend, my parents took me in this big empty bathtub thingy with loud, white sheets that flapped around, went up and down, and swung side to side…”

Sure, I’d land on a glacier.

It takes guts to leap from a picture on a vision board to the actual moment in unfamiliar territory. But life is more fun when you have grand plans, especially if they include big adventure.

Just Like Huck Finn

When my dad was 17, he floated 60 miles of the Colorado River on a ping-pong table. Talon, like his grandfather, is an adventurer at heart. But, unlike his grandfather, he required a LOT more gear to get down his first river.

Birding, Baby: The New Extreme Sport

I bet you never thought birding was hard-core. I didn’t really, either. But then we added a baby to the mix, and Montana decided to sprinkle in some of its famous fickle weather to make our bird-watching missions more extreme.

Live the cliche

You never know when miniature disasters or major catastrophes will change the landscape of your life forever. I’ve been thinking a lot about life landscapes this week, as we got word that a past river adventure buddy passed away unexpectedly and another friend lost his wife. It’s so cliche to say, isn’t […]

Tea and Babies – Myanmar Trekking Part One

We couldn’t speak the language.  We didn’t understand the social structure in the ethnic Shan villages.  We slept on the floor of a teak cabin in the home of complete strangers in the mountains of Myanmar.  But even in a completely foreign setting, tea and babies allowed us to bridge […]

One Minute in Bangkok

River ferries, food stalls, woks, kids, temples, bright lights, fast motorcycles, foreign alphabets.  Bangkok has been a blur of activity and culture after the past year of our slow-paced South Pacific Ocean explorations.  I tried to catch the vibe of Bangkok in this 60 second video.  Check it out. After […]

Front Page: Read our update in the Missoulian Newspaper!

I might have picked a better picture of us if I’d known it would end up on the front page of our hometown newspaper.  But what fun to be able to share a few stories with the press.  Here’s a snippet from the article.  Click here to read more. In […]

The Great Goat Hunt of 2013

A few weeks ago, just before dinner with some friends on Fetoko Island, I heard Rob telling hunting stories.  He was re-enacting past elk kills, and explaining how he stalked ungulates through misty Montana mountains each fall.  I suddenly realized it was opening day of hunting season back home.  Rob […]

Cue the Soundtrack from Jaws

A lone sailboat speeds from the lagoon to the open ocean through a narrow pass in a remote island. Waves break on either side of this pass, crashing on pink-white sands as the sea floor rises abruptly from 2,000 feet deep to zero at the shore of this Pacific atoll. […]

13 Interviews – A Pennsylvania Perspective on Sailing Away

Today is the first day of our adventure. As we enter a new country, it seems fitting to reflect a bit on where we’re going, as well as reflect on what others think about our upcoming sailing voyage. When we went back to visit Philadelphia in February, Bri and I […]

Book Release! (Want a free copy?)

Some of you probably remember when I started writing a kids’ book during grad school.  Maybe you even heard the reading I gave at a local Missoula bookstore almost a decade ago. After I finished the novel, I shelved it for quite some time.  Then, in the midst of moving […]

Farewell (for now) to Working for Freshwater

9 years.  5 legislative sessions. 100s of grant proposals.  28,000 miles of streams and rivers to speak up for. Dozens of floats, monitoring days, and presentations.  Thousands of meetings, laughs, successes, snafus, late nights, and learning moments. That’s just a sliver of what working for clean water means to me. Today […]

So Long, Big Red

Since tomorrow is my last day at Trout Unlimited, it seems fitting that I handed over the title to our 1994 Dodge Dakota pickup this morning.  Trout Unlimited bought the truck for $1 back in 2009 and, because of its stamina and sheer willpower, we dubbed it the “Red Rider” […]

A Pair of Skis Saved My Soul

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”  – Edward Abbey. by: Cassidy Randall (M.U.P. Files contributor) I am shaped by sun and desert. I wonder that snow has found its way into my bones, […]

Limitless Exploration

A fellow Montanan — and friend of our friends — Tyler Bradt is about to set sail across the Pacific on a similar voyage to our own.  Only difference is that he has a boat already, while we’re crewing on other people’s boats.  Oh, and also the fact that he […]

Like a Fish Out of Water

We hauled the boat out of Flathead Lake, and winterized her for her stay “on the hard” over the next 7+ months.  It’s always a bittersweet (mostly bitter) moment to see Spindrift swaying like a stranded fish above the lake, knowing that we’re saying goodbye to sailing the blue-green waters […]