Hi, I’m Amanda and welcome to my blog! My partner Telly and I are an adventurous couple who love to be outdoors exploring. This blog is of the outdoor adventures we go on; almost all within a tank of gas roundtrip from wherever we are, which at the time of this post is Fresno, California.
Fresno is almost smack dab in the middle of California. It’s roughly 220 miles north of LA, 170 miles south of Sacramento, and 185 miles southeast of San Francisco. Yosemite National Park is roughly 60 miles to the North, Kings Canyon National Park is 60 miles to the East, and Sequoia National Park is 75 miles to the Southeast. I’m saying all that because being smack dab in the middle of Cali-for-nia…there are so many places to go, things to do, and some of the best views, all within…you guessed it, just a tank of gas away! I prefer to tell people not from here that it’s 2-1/2 hours to the beach and 1-1/2 hours to the mountains and most people from Nebraska, my home state, get it; there’s a ton of variety of awesome stuff super close! We’re here to share these experiences with you.
Now, from the following picture, I don’t think I can truly say Fresno itself is the “best little city in the U.S.A.”, but I could definitely say it might be the best located city in the U.S.A.. However, I’ll have to visit far more places to know for sure so for now, I’m going with it.
Since we’ve been in Fresno, we’ve done something almost every weekend and I started this blog to show others all there is to do and for others to see how easy it is to get out and explore.
We have a tough time sitting at home on the weekends and we love exploring the outdoors. Life is short and we only have this one life, plus we work hard all week and sometimes need to decompress and have some fun and explore the world on the weekends. Something about getting out in nature eases my mind and gives me the space to see things clearer and gives me different perspectives!
Our adventures are not anything fancy or expensive. In fact, we usually don’t even go out to eat, but rather cook our own food by taking a little camping gas grill and a cooler full of grub and drinks, find a park with good views, cook, and then continue on.
Telly has always done the grilling like this (bringing our own grill and food and finding a place) and the first time was at the beach and I remember thinking how cool it was and remember how much I really enjoyed it.
Don’t get me wrong, at first it seemed like a lot of work, but after doing it, I realized it really isn’t and it is so worth it…something about grillin and chllin and needless to say, I was hooked.
We’ve done it ever since and at some cool random places; like the time right in the middle of the trail we were snowshoeing on, or the time on top of a mountain we climbed in the winter with snow and ice. It was a little scary climbing the mountain, but it was awesome at the top!!
Sometimes our adventures are just for the day and sometimes we get camping reservations somewhere and sometimes we reluctantly get a hotel, but most of the time it’s just a day trip. Depending on what we’re up for and where we are going, we might take bikes, an inflatable tube/boat, kayaks, swimsuit and towel, rollerblades, water boots, or just our hiking shoes and sun hats…and sometimes we pack it all.
We have three pups that we love taking with us too wherever we can, but some places don’t allow pets so they have to stay home.
We try to find places that are not too crowded as that just isn’t our thing. Usually if it is a little crowded, we’ll do some off trail exploring and a lot of times we get just as good, if not better views and plus we’re away from the crowds. This does usually entail climbing on, over, and around rocks or walking through or across a creek. However, if we do want to go to a popular spot, we are sure to go super early, which we usually do regardless, but this has always worked out really well for the crowded places and traffic.
Lastly, as long as we keep exploring every weekend, which I don’t see changing, I will write a post each week. If we skip a weekend, I’ll try to still post about something. We’ll see how it works, but I’m thinking on Tuesdays. When we go on a further away vacations, I’ll post about places we go and things we do within a tank of gas from wherever we are staying.
Happy adventures and please leave a comment with any thoughts, questions, or suggestions. I want to be interactive with you guys so I’m open for whatever you got for me.