Girin Travels
A running log of my travels — cities, coasts, national parks, and ski towns — with photos, an interactive map, and a timeline of the whole road.
Trips coming up next.
November 21, 2026
Illinois, USA · The Loop & lakefront
Chicago is the great city of the American interior — the third-largest in the country, built where the Great Lakes meet the prairie and the rivers that carried commerce west. After…
December 28, 2026
California / Nevada, USA · Lake Tahoe
Ringing in the new year up in the Sierra — five nights at the lake from December 28 through January 2. Tahoe in winter is a different place from the summer lake: the surrounding pe…
April 10, 2027
District of Columbia, USA · The National Mall
Washington, D.C. was purpose-built to be a capital — a diamond of land ceded by Maryland and Virginia in 1790, laid out on a grand plan of diagonal avenues and open vistas by the F…
The latest stamps in the passport.
June 1, 2025
Alaska, USA · Denali & the Interior
Alaska is America on a scale that's hard to take in — a fifth the size of the entire Lower 48, with the continent's highest mountains, biggest glaciers, and most wildlife, and fewe…
April 20, 2025
Lazio · Lombardy · Campania, Italy · Rome · Milan · the Amalfi Coast
Italy is where so much of the Western world was invented — Rome's empire, Latin, Roman law and roads, and then, a thousand years later, the Renaissance that remade art and science.…
May 24, 2024
Arizona, USA · South Rim
The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, up to 18 miles across, and 277 river-miles long — carved by the Colorado River over the last five to six million years through rock nearly two bill…