Home

Growing up in the small and conservative town of Holland, Michigan, I remember a wooden plaque my mother had up in our beloved country A-frame house.  It read, “Home is Where the Heart is.”  As a young child I just thought that place would always be my home, as I pranced along in my little Midwestern bubble.  As the years passed by, from signing high school yearbooks to waving goodbye to my parents as I organized my first dorm room in a nearby city, I began to realize there was a bigger world out there…and I wanted to burst out of my childhood home and explore it all.

So after my college graduation, I loaded up my small coupe and headed west to Colorado.  With my best friend Eileen in tow, I was about to call some place else home.  At this time over a decade ago, Denver was still a hidden gem (think nearly empty parking lots at your favorite trailhead on a weekend).  I immediately fell in love with my surroundings.  The mountains were like an outdoor playground, and I was constantly at recess.

My desire to be in the mountains and find great trails to roam around grew stronger daily.  I wondered (and still sometimes do) how people who called this beautiful Mecca home could not constantly have a happy soul with all of this mountain fresh air and fascinating land to explore right at their fingertips.  I strived to find all of the alluring outdoor spots in Colorado.   As successful as I feel I was at that, the new places to explore were, and continue to be, never-ending.  Not just in Colorado, but also in this wonderful country, and all over this vast amazing Earth that everyone calls home.  Years later now, I have developed quite an archive of amazing Colorado day hikes, peaceful camping spots, and beautiful mountain photographs.

As a frequent global traveler, I have also collected many overseas travel tips and destinations to rock your world.  Think of my blog as a Pandora’s box of all of these tips and inspirations for you, as often told through many of my personal experiences.  So let’s slowly open it up and explore.  Hopefully it inspires you to get outside, see this beautiful world we live in, and find out more about all the places people call home.

It wasn’t until a few years after moving to Denver that I actually felt like it was home.  Until then, my heart was still trying to hold on to the Midwest while fighting the obvious, which was my love for Colorado. I actually remember the exact moment it happened.  I was flying back from a photography trip to Ireland, gazing out of the airplane window as we descended into Denver. I saw the mighty snow-covered Rocky Mountains jutting into the blue sky…I knew I was home.  That’s also when I realized, your heart can be in many places, and you can call many places home.  Sometimes a place feels like home because that is where you grew up and your family lives, other times it is where your soul is happy and friendships grow, or maybe it’s in a traveling van where four wheels on the pavement (or under an Aspen grove) is your home.  No matter where you call home, be happy there.  Explore it.  Love it.  And always follow your heart.