New Zealand and Australia 2024

By Ben |

A bit of background: we initially planned to take this trip in 2023, but with one thing and another postponed it to 2024, which is our 15th anniversary. We started planning months in advance, since we had only two weeks to work with, we wanted to fit in all the activities we cared about while leaving some flexibility. I booked the flights and the campervan rental, and Jessie booked the hotels and car rental. I mention these details because they are relevant later.

Arizona

By Ben |

My grandparents retired to Arizona around 1990, and we went to visit multiple times in the 2000s and 2010s. Here are my photos from Tucson as well as Biosphere 2, Meteor Crater, and the Sonora Desert Museum.

Aspen, Colorado

By Ben |

In April, 1997, I took a bus from Grinnell to Aspen, CO to attend the first annual conference of the short-lived Alliance For Community Networking (AFCN), an organization that aimed to "bridge the digital divide" with public computing centers nationwide. The conference itself was pretty forgettable, but I had a great hike up Aspen Mountain and took a few photos.