Mountain Skiing

Skiing in the mountains is such a different experience than skiing at your run-of-the-mill ski hills that we visit back home in Minnesota. There are a few good ski areas up in northern Minnesota, but they don’t even begin to compare to skiing out West in the mountains.

Instead of skiing Big Sky, we opted for Bridger Bowl, a smaller, lesser known, and less-touristy ski area. It was still way more impressive than any ski hill I had ever seen. It seemed like the trails lasted forever as they wound down through trees and forests, past mountain views, chair lifts, and chalets. The snow was impeccable: extra powdery at some

Mountain Skiing

Skiing in the mountains is such a different experience than skiing at your run-of-the-mill ski hills that we visit back home in Minnesota. There are a few good ski areas up in northern Minnesota, but they don’t even begin to compare to skiing out West in the mountains.

Instead of skiing Big Sky, we opted for Bridger Bowl, a smaller, lesser known, and less-touristy ski area. It was still way more impressive than any ski hill I had ever seen. It seemed like the trails lasted forever as they wound down through trees and forests, past mountain views, chair lifts, and chalets. The snow was impeccable: extra powdery at some

Animals in Yellowstone

Yellowstone is filled with animals of all kinds, and we were lucky enough to spot quite a few during our time in Montana last month. Especially buffalo. There were buffalo everywhere. Our first time driving into the park, we spotted a band of mountains goats on the side of the road. We stopped to admire them, and as we did, we saw a (hornless) elk wandering around on the other side of the road.

Yellowstone Winter Scenery

Yellowstone National Park is often considered a summer destination. I have never visited in the summer, but I’ve heard it’s beautiful. However, winter in Yellowstone, a very under-rated adventure, is stunning as well. We just got back from a 10-day trip to Montana, where we spent a few days visiting Yellowstone to go cross-country skiing and animal watching. In this post, I want to focus solely on the scenery (the animals will come later). The beautiful mountains covered in snow, the fresh flocking on the trees, the powdery snow blowing about like fog, the vast winter landscapes stretching on and on and on.

Our first day in Yellowstone, we went cross-country skiing. The snow was perfect; my dad even claimed that this trail had the best snow conditions we would ever ski on. I don’t

Christmas in the Mountains

Merry Christmas! We’ve been in Montana for 5 days now, and after a few trips to Yellowstone and a few days of skiing (both of which I will post on soon), we are finally taking a day to rest, Christmas Day. It’s been a nice day; we’ve played games, blasted Christmas music, baked and decorated cookies, gone on walks to admire the mountains, and played in the snow.

I also explored a few of my Christmas presents today. I leafed through the photography books from my mom and, and tried out some of my new clip on iPhone lenses. The lenses are actually really cool. The clip on over the camera lense on your phone, and then when

Heading West

Saturday morning, my family and I packed up the car and embarked the a two day drive from Minnesota to Montana to spend Christmas in the mountains. Back in Minnesota, we haven’t gotten much snow this year, or least not in the part I’m from. We had about a week of snow early in December before it all melted and left us with spring-like days. Saturday, there wasn’t a single patch of snow and the grass was closer to green than it was to brown. Pretty surprising considering Minnesota’s stereotypes isn’t it?

As we drove West, we were ecstatic to see the little bits of snow in North Dakota and finally the thick blankets of snow that covered Montana’s land. The snow in Montana was

Top of the Rock: Day v. Night

One of my favorite things we did in New York was visiting the top of Rockefeller Center, known as the Top of the Rock. At 70 stories up, it offers an amazing view of the city, both at night and during the day. After our first full day in the city, we bought tickets to see the view. We were corralled through elevators, security guards and checkpoints as thorough as TSA security, large panels displaying images and history of Rockefeller Center, and a “photo station” where your picture was taken in front of a backdrop of the city, before finally making it up to the top of the tower.

As the final elevator doors opened and I saw my first glimpse of the view through a window, my jaw dropped. The buildings were all light up against the night sky, spanning on and on and on, and we were above it all. It felt like a dream.

Greenwich Village, Soho, and Chinatown

For our second full day in New York, we had scheduled a visit to NYU. NYU’s buildings don’t form much of a campus. Basically, they’re all clustered around Washington Square Park. However, Waverly Place runs parallel to Washington Square Park, just on the other side of some of NYU’s buildings. Growing up, I was a Wizards of Waverly Place addict (for those of you who don’t know, it’s only the best Disney Channel TV show ever), and so of course I had to stop and take a few snapshots of the street sign. Washington Square Park was a beautiful park, adorned with trees and walkways and a central square with an arch through which you can see the Empire State Building. Under the arch was a shrine to the Paris attack that had happened two weeks prior. Since the rest of the campus was so scattered and urban, I loved that it all centered around a unified and nature-filled park.

Central Park and The Met

Central Park. What a quintessential New York experience. Our first full day in New York, after a college visit in the morning, we took the subway straight to Central Park to wander through its trails and trees and eventually made our way to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, more commonly know as the Met, (conveniently located right on the edge of Central Park). I don’t know how anyone would survive living in New York without Central Park; it’s such a breath of fresh air. You’d think it would be an oasis away from the city, and it is, for the most part. But the city noises and skyscrapers peeking out over the trees are always there to remind you that you are, in fact, still in one of the biggest cities in the world.

Urban Boston

Boston University is in the middle of a very urban area. Lots of people, street lights, tall buildings, even a track for the T. The T is what they call Boston’s public transportation system. I honestly don’t know its real name, but I know that Bostonians don’t call it anything else. It’s kind of a mix between the subway, a train and a bus. It runs throughout the whole city and even the surrounding areas. After visiting Boston University, we walked thorough the outskirts of the campus and through the neighboring streets to get to the T to take us downtown.

To me, this area felt very different than the other parts of Boston that we visited. The rest of Boston that we saw was very historical, with old buildings, statues of important historic