Over the past two months, I found myself headed out of Chicago every two weeks, first to see family in Boston, then for a long weekend in Venice Beach, and finally, to visit my brother and his girlfriend at their new place in Colorado, about an hour north of Denver. It was my first time in… Continue reading Colorado
Category: travel
Venice Beach
I recently took a long weekend to hang out in Venice Beach, the Land of Lebowski. No itinerary. We ate some good food, rode some shitty bikes, stayed in an AirBnB along the canals, hiked to the tallest peak in the Santa Monica Mountains and caught our last dose of Pacific sun before heading back… Continue reading Venice Beach
Babson Boulders
As a native Midwesterner, New England has always seemed full of secrets to me. But none as surreal as the Babson Boulders, a seemingly random collection of massive boulders with inspirational all-caps etchings scattered around the forest of an abandoned inland settlement in Gloucester, Massachusetts. I first learned about the boulders six or seven years… Continue reading Babson Boulders
Porcupine Mountains
To ring in the end of a busy summer, and get away from the familiar noise of the city, I recently went north to Ontonagon (on-tuh-noggin), a small town of around 1,500 in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (the UP), near the Wisconsin border and the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, about 400-ish miles straight north… Continue reading Porcupine Mountains
The Iceland Ring Road: Part I
I took an eight-day drive with my wife and partner Sarah around Iceland’s famous and rugged Ring Road. It was like a weeklong movie filled with mountains, swamp gas, lucid dreams and horsemeat. In these posts, I explain how we did it and what we saw along the way.
The Iceland Ring Road: Part II
I took an eight-day drive with my wife and partner Sarah around Iceland’s famous and rugged Ring Road. In the last post, I explained how we did it. In this one, I explain what we saw and ate along the way. Against popular currents we took a counterclockwise route around Iceland’s 830-mile Ring Road, starting and… Continue reading The Iceland Ring Road: Part II
New Mexico, 2015
From two weeks spent in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. One of my favorite places in the world.
“I’m tryin’ to backroads it to Walmart!”
After spending two weeks in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, for the first half of July, I’m officially back in Chicago. At least, my body is. My psyche is still in the desert somewhere. On one hand, it feels like I was gone for a long time. On the other, it feels like I never… Continue reading “I’m tryin’ to backroads it to Walmart!”
Natural Theater, or, the Very Large Array
Yesterday I took a few-hour jaunt out of T or C to the Very Large Array, the, uh, very large radio telescope/observatory roughly fifty miles west of Socoro, New Mexico—notable only because once you’re past Socoro, there’s nothing but mountains, fields, and a gradual elevation climb to 7,000 feet above sea level. Every five or… Continue reading Natural Theater, or, the Very Large Array
Making Truth in Alaska: The Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference
As a native Illinoisian, mine was a childhood of highways, humid summers, and Hardees. So when I learned I’d won a grant from the City of Chicago to visit Alaska I wondered if I’d come back alive. Alaska would be my first encounter with actual geology, a foreign concept in my home city of Chicago,… Continue reading Making Truth in Alaska: The Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference
ben van loon 