Travel

Hawaii

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Hello friends. It is a little bit weird posting these pictures now as we took this trip almost two years ago, but I realized I never posted them to this blog and I wanted to! This is one of the most magical trips I have ever been on. Courtney and I were able to spend a week on Oahu. I know this is the most obvious statement in the world, but Hawaii is a special place. It was like time stopped for us for an entire week and we were able to really just slow down and rest. We didn’t just lay on the beach, we actually got to drive most of the island, but it was all beautiful and felt like a dream. I absolutely can’t wait to take the kids back some day.

Most of these images were made with the Fuji X100f, but some are with an X-T3 with 14mm, 33mm, and 90mm lenses. Fuji always be hitting. I edited them in Lightroom with the Mastin Labs Ektar 100 presets.

Kansas City

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Every year Courtney and I spend a few nights in a different state. Eventually we will hit all 50 states! It has been an awesome tradition that I would recommend to any new married couple. This year we planned a trip out to Arkansas to see the eclipse with my parents. They were leaving a day earlier than us and taking our kids so we decided to spend a couple nights in Kansas City on the way out as our “state” for this year.

Highways rest stops are fascinating to me. This one was a vibe, as the kids would say.

Our AirBNB was right in the city. It was cozy and walking distance from a great coffee shop so it was perfect.

The next morning we had breakfast at a great little place called Happy Gillis before heading to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. It is a free museum with some really beautiful and important pieces of art. We saw work by Monet, Van Gogh, Rothko, Warhol, and a great series of self-portraits from he 70’s by a photographer named Melissa Shook.

One of our favorite things we to do when we travel is try to find really good food, especially if it is important to the location. After asking a couple locals and doing some googling we ended up at Joe’s Kansas City Barbecue and oh man, it was worth it. I think it is the best barbecue I have ever had, though there was this one place in St. Louis…

After lunch we ended up at another great coffee spot downtown with rooftop seating that was really cool.

After coffee we made a pilgrimage deep behind enemy lines to the headquarters of the evil ones.

For dinner we found a cool little wine bar in the city (don’t worry, Courtney didn’t drink any) and then called it a night. Off to Arkansas the next morning.

Kansas City is cool! It kinda felt like a Midwest Denver. I think if living in a good city is really important, than it seems like a great place to raise a family. Being near mountains wilderness is really important to me so it wouldn’t be for us, but I could see why people are moving there for sure.

I will post the Arkansas portion of our trip in a separate post. See you then!

3 Days in Oregon

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About a year ago Courtney and I flew out to Oregon to spend a couple of days on the coast for our anniversary. It is a ridiculously beautiful part of the Courtney that we fell in love with immediately and cannot wait to go back. I did a couple of more detailed blog posts over on Our Adventure Blog but I wanted to post the more “travel” style photos on this blog as well.

Oregon is freaking amazing. I wanna go back very soon.