Happy Thanksgiving from Towns and Trails!

Hope everyone is enjoying their Thanksgiving!  Ours is about ready to kick off (the Tofurkey is cooking!) and I wanted to sit down and wish you all a happy day, hopefully spent with family and friends.

Last year I succumbed to the cliche of listing things I am thankful for.  Well, it has been another great year for us, so please excuse me while I do it again.

Friends and Family – All throughout this year we were reminded how lucky we are to have amazing friends and family.

We spent another fantastic week in Lake Placid with our parents, at the same ‘camp’ where we were married last year.  It was such a good time with a lot of fun moments and memories.  And then, as fall rolled around, and the idea of moving to the Adirondacks picked up steam, our parents once again provided the support and advice that we try hard not to take for granted.

Jess was able to fly back to California to attend the wedding of her close friend Susan and her husband David.  We wish you two the best of luck on what is sure to be an exciting adventure through life together.

This year also found us spending more time, and growing closer, to our good friends in the Boston area, which – of course – makes moving away from them even harder!  But we’ll be back often, and you guys always have a place to stay with us up in the mountains.

This website, and those who enjoy it – We had a lot of fun working on the website this year.  It has been such a creative outlet for us, and reminds and inspires us to do more… to try to, as one friend wrote, “build adventuring into our daily lives.” We hope it does the same for you!  Getting emails and hearing from all of you is something I truly appreciate.

The Yankees – Sorry fellow Bostonians, but I had to include this one.  A winning Yankee seasons is always fun, and when you live in enemy territory that fun is magnified!  After attending the final game at the old Yankee Stadium, watching them break in the new stadium with a championship seemed like a perfect “new beginning” for the team we both love.

Next season, we plan on spending many a night at the Lake Placid Pub and Brewery watching them defend their title!

Going for it! – We are about a week away from realizing a dream of ours – moving to the Adirondack mountains.  This was always something we thought would be a retirement adventure… but this summer it dawned on us that NOW is the time to go for it.  There just seemed to be a perfect storm of circumstances that all pointed toward it.

It is hard to describe how happy, excited, proud, and terrified this makes us feel, all at the same time.  It is such a HUGE move, not just in terms of where we will be geographically located, but in terms of how we want to live our lives.  We want to simplify things, live more locally, and with meaning… to slow down the pace of life and try to enjoy it more… every single day.  Not just on long weekends or when we both have vacation time.

We are on the verge of forging our own “new beginning,” in a place we both truly love.  And I can’t express how thankful I am that we are.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!