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“Almost heaven, West Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River”   John Denver: Take Me Home, Country Roads Shenandoah National Park is relatively close to NYC. It was May and we already knew that we were moving to Boston at the beginning of June. We only had a couple of weeks to visit this park by car since the distance from Boston would be too ... distant. Sure, there was a lot to pack and do but the mountains simply couldn’t wait. We hit the road early in the morning on May 22nd. The visit of West Virginia was not optional. We made a stop at Harpers Ferry.  We had dinner at a restaurant along the river and of course we made a quick stop at the Appalachian Trail Visitor Center (unfortunately it was closed due to COVID). Harpers Ferry was a beautiful quintessential small town with historical landmarks. At the end of the day we built our tent in Low-Water Bridge Campground . The Shenandoah river was flowing right next to our tent but we were so tired that we did not end...

“Ako na nový rok, tak po celý rok,” is an old Slovak saying that is translated to: How you meet the new year is how you will spend it. After our 2021 New Year’s modest celebrations with friends, Mia and I did not know what to do for the next few days. We woke up on New Year’s Day, January 1st, and started thinking. NYC was cold and we wished to see the sun and experience warm air. Let’s visit Virginia Beach! In fact we wanted to go as south as possible within 2 days. Since the pandemic did not allow free movement across states, we decided to sleep in our car. We packed sleeping bags, few clothes and left the apartment around 6 PM. The weather was cold and rainy. And it was dark. Driving was not that great. We listened to music, Slovak language lessons and entertained ourselves by talking about this crazy trip. We spent our first night in a Walmart Supercenter parking lot in Pocomoke City, Maryland. Surprisingly, sleeping in the car was not that bad at all. We used our warm sleeping bag...

“When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”  When Harry Met Sally... (1989) In the midst of a global pandemic, when the future was so uncertain, we knew that it wouldn’t be a traditional wedding.  Our wedding planning all started months ago in our small Upper West Side studio apartment. We began planning our wedding together the day after we got engaged (but if you know anything about Mia, you would know that she had really been planning her wedding day since she was a little girl). Without all the answers and with a lot of moments of “wait..., what!?”, we began planning the day that would mark the beginning of our lives together. And like in the movie quote, we both agreed that we wanted that day to start as soon as possible, before the situation with COVID-19 in New York, and in the world, got worse. Truth be told, the process was anything other than what we expected wedding planning w...

Vacation time! On August 14th, Martin and I packed our luggage and camping gear to head out on our first camping trip to the Adirondack Mountains in Wilmington, New York (close to Lake Placid). We decided to come here based on a recommendation from Martin's friends, Michal and Liz. The only problem was that we didn’t yet have a tent or a sleeping pad, but Martin placed an order on Amazon and within a few days (the evening before we were planning on leaving) our budget-friendly tent arrived! We used luggage to pack our gear and everything we would need for our 3 night/4day camping trip! The plan was to pack as much as we could the evening before until we couldn’t anymore, and then wake up bright and early the next day to finish what we didn’t get to. Most helpful to our packing was that a few days before we created a packing list together to ensure we brought everything we needed! The weather was forcasted to be cloudy and rainy, so we packed for both rain and sunshine. ...