If you spend enough time in New England you start to feel personally owed a moose sighting. And then one day you are driving a road you have traveled hundreds of times and something moves at the tree line.

I went to The Butterfly Place in Westford on a regular August afternoon and left feeling like I had been selected. Two butterflies landed on me. Unprompted. I am choosing to believe this means something.

Growing up near Brownsville, the Port Isabel Lighthouse was just there. Part of the landscape. Something you passed on the way to South Padre Island without really stopping. It took moving to Boston to make me actually go inside.

I went to the Wichita Mountains expecting great landscapes. I did not expect to almost step on a rattlesnake.

Some places just have you. South Padre Island has had me since I was a kid. I got married there. Returning in June 2024 with a camera felt like coming home all over again.

There is a particular feeling that comes with driving back into a city you used to live in. Not quite nostalgia, not quite homecoming. Something in between that does not have a clean word for it.

I booked the Save the Bay Seal Watch Tour thinking it would be a fun afternoon. I did not expect it to end up being one of my favorite things I have done in Rhode Island.

We drove to the Canadian border to watch the sky go dark in the middle of the afternoon and I would do it again immediately, even knowing what the drive home was going to look like.

Boston in early spring does this thing where it gives you one perfect week and then takes it back. Magnolia season is that week.

I made a classic rookie mistake and drove the Kancamagus Highway during peak fall foliage season. I would do it again without hesitation.

Most people drive right past Flume Cascade without realizing it is there. That is exactly what makes it worth stopping for.

There are fall drives and then there is Crawford Notch in early October with fog sitting low over the mountains. They are not the same category.

The weather was not cooperating. Cloudy, foggy, light drizzle coming and going. I got out of the car anyway. Silver Cascade in Harts Location, NH is worth it every time.

If you are driving through Franconia Notch in October and you do not stop at The Basin, I need you to turn around. I know that sounds dramatic. I stand by it.