Is it weird we spend more time on the beach in winter than summer.
Banff National Park, Alberta Canada ’17
After a hefty fight to have a functioning visa again, tour reunited us in Canada, and gave us a chance to explore one of it’s National Parks with some of the road family.
Lake Louise. So worth the hype.
Alaska 2017
Last year Patrick surprised me with tickets to Iceland for my Birthday (aka the millennial photographer’s dream) for the following September. But life happens, and travel is an area life likes to have a lot of say on.
What was meant to be a two week trip in The States turned into two months due to visa complications, with me catching a flight back to Nashville from Portland, Maine, as the tour took everyone else over the boarder into Canada. Long story shorter; after a lot of phone calls, missing applications and a flight to Boston when it looked like it all might be sorted in time for our connection to UK, in the end we couldn’t leave the States in time for the Icelandic dream.
So we crashed in Boston, felt sorry for ourselves for a bit and then the travel master, Patrick, worked his magic and managed to swap our flights and got us tickets to Alaska for a couple of days later.
We always said we would go back after our first trip. We’d go back when it wasn’t with work, when we had more than a day to explore. Be careful what you wish for folks 😉
(below) Earthquake Park
Bear hair up a tree
Matanuska
Matanuska Glacier
Beluga Point where we can confirm there are no Belugas. I WILL see whales one day! 
Alaska Wildlife Conservation Centre 
Take that, life!
The Faroe Islands
18 islands in the North Atlantic Ocean, somewhere between Norway and Iceland. With it’s sheer cliffed coasts, colourful ports in teeny tiny wooden towns, mountain tunnels for miles, endless sheep and a fjord or two, of anywhere we’ve been the Islands felt the most untouched and other worldly and yet reminded us most of home…think Ireland on steroids.
If you ever visit the Islands you’ll soon discover sheep rule the place and are the main form of traffic on the one road that connects all the islands. You’ll also quickly notice the stark lack of trees. The only ones around are in a few mini man planted forests.
Antelope Island, Salt Lake City, Utah
That time we found Bison!
While out on a five week tour one of our off days landed us in Salt Lake City. After abandoning our original plan to drive to the salt flats, after waking up to the bus creeping through a blizzard, we instead rented a jeep and set off for the much closer, Antelope Island. Once again under prepared for the adventure we found ourselves on we had to borrow some layers before setting off and lucky for us it turns out you can basically drive around the whole Island anyway…blizzard prof!
Although Google and the name of the place itself told us we’d see some wildlife we were shocked at just how much we saw and couldn’t quite believe how close we were able to get to these magnificent creatures. Ended the day feeling thankful for the weather disrupting our plans. If anyone ever finds themselves in the area this place is so worth a trip!
California to the Dominican Republic
It’s been a busy few weeks and after an initially snowy start waiting out blizzards in the bus in Ohio and Ocean City, January has brought a whole lot of sun and sand for us. So here’s a few snaps from some of the quieter moments along the way starting with Ventura Pier, CA.
One of the more bizarre opportunities in the christian music world is being invited to play on a christian cruise. We were meeting the ship in the Dominican Republic and all agreed if we’re going to travel that far we should grab the chance and make the most of it, so band, wives, babies and crew spent two glorious work free days on a Dominican beach before boarding the cruise.
As luxury as it sounds a cruise has isn’t our really ideal holiday..well..one of us might be a little more into the idea than the other (ahem..Patrick) I would never say no to it of course 😉 but poolside holidays in general aren’t really my thing, I guess it just feels a bit sterile and cut off from the culture you’re in…and let’s be honest a boat packed with a lot of friendly holiday makers is a lot for any introvert to deal with! But it’s what I love about this life, finding yourself in places you would never think to go and experiencing things you otherwise never would and calling it ‘work'(!) We only jumped on the boat for the last couple of days of the cruise and it was a fun experience, exploring abandoned decks at night and sitting out on our little balcony with only the ocean below and for miles around is an uncharted feeling it’s near impossible to get your head round.
Home for Christmas
Christmas is a sacred time in the band family calendar, the month of December is always blocked off as a ‘no show’ month. The offers come in but it’s the one time I think no one finds it hard to turn the work down. It’s the annual sabbatical, the year’s sabbath, whatever that looks like for each of the little family units, whether it’s hibernating in Nashville, enjoying the luxury of routine or finally having uncompromised time with family. For us it means Northern Ireland.
This was our first Christmas with a home of our own in Bangor to start making traditions in. Sure the walls are still bare and we didn’t quite have the productive time in it we imagined but we had a proper tree (an artificial one skinny enough to fit our little space) and made a point of spending multiple evenings plopped on the sofa basking in the joys of British television (special thanks to The Crown and Planet Earth)
We had two weeks of soaking up the coast and trudging back and forth between our parents houses eating their food and enjoying the easy somewhat eccentric banter that only comes with family. We were concerned the time was going to feel short, not long enough to recover from the year and ready ourselves for the one ahead but, however long, Christmas is a different sort of break, it’s also the closing chapter of a year, and possibly the only time we feel we can actually allow yourself to fully stop and eventually switch off. Despite the fact that it’s a busy season in itself, it’s a welcome world away from the rest of the year.
Lake Tahoe, CA
This October during the first 3 week stint of the Autumn tour we found our selves with a day off in Reno Nevada, not thinking too much about it the few days before, simply excited for a day of rest, we hadn’t made plans any further than lying in ’til the bus went quiet with everyone away doing their off day routines and eventually wandering towards whatever the closest coffee the city had to offer was. That was until we heard murmurs of how close we were going to be to Lake Tahoe, and then it wasn’t long before we had two cars booked for the day and a group of 10 up for making the trek into the mountains.
So we packed on as many layers as we could form our under prepared suitcases and set off early. Finding a (necessarily hipster friendly) coffee shop on the way to fuel our caffeine reliant crew in the quirky little hippy town of Truckee, we made it to Emerald Bay by lunch time.
Being from a small Island that you could cross in a day, the scale of American landscapes will always leave me in awe. Climbing a pile of boulders the height of a house and looking out over an endless, unbroken sea of fir trees, simple as it sounds, is still a breath taking novelty we chase ..even the pinecones are giant!
When you’re worn out living in intense community and the days are feeling mundane and all starting to look the same, unexpected little adventures like this are what keep us going, it’s the allure of the road. They feel like a gift, a breath of fresh air right when you need it, so we can stumble back onto the bus that night feeling like ourselves again and feeling love and looked after.
Dustin went fishing instead but it brought him equal amounts of joy.
Alaska
White ridges snake beneath us, turquoise pools on top of mountains slowly sink into the mist below and I can’t help but feel sad watching Alaska drift away. I think it’s safe to say we’ve fallen for this place and all it’s untamed beauty.
It’s so easy to get frustrated in our lifestyle, going from city to city but having to stay on the outskirts, when the only landscape explored is a venue’s grounds or taking 3 flights half way across the world only to turn back two days later. But it’s a huge privilege that our work gives us the opportunity to travel at all and trips like this, to places we most likely otherwise would have never gotten to see, are a sharp reminder of what a sweet gift it is.
Maybe it was watching ‘Free Willy’ too many times as a kid that’s to blame but I’ve always wanted to go to Alaska and, unlike many of the naive notions we take as kids, this one didn’t disappoint when finally reached. If anything the vast wilderness of Alaska far surpassed anything I could have dreamed up.
Any trip that get’s us Thompsons back in our thick woolies and boots is an instant winner. According to the locals it never rains in Anchorage…we’re not so sure…but we didn’t mind the weather at all, the mist only added to the atmosphere and the distinctly Irish rain made it feel like a normal summer day trip. The novelty of Nashville’s heat wears off quickly for those with Irish skin.
We drove from Anchorage to Whitter and took the ‘Glacier Quest’ cruise (considered one of the shorter ones at 4 hours) in the hope of finding some whales. In the end there were no whales to be found this trip (all the more reason to come back again right!?) but getting to take in so much of a landscape so vastly different in scale and beauty from any we’d seen before, listening to cracks form in glaciers and seeing huge chunks break off into the sea made the journey and getting soaked to the skin so worth it. And for someone (like Patrick) who’s choice of book for the trip was Michael Crichton’s ‘Pirate Latitudes’, a shipwreck was a particularly exciting find.
While most people, put off by the heavy rain and winds, stayed inside the boat watching though the glass or napping on tables, we found it harder to stay inside. Coming in to quickly warm up on coffee and then finding ourselves being drawn back out the door again.
This isn’t a ‘crossed of the bucket list’ kind of deal this is more of a ‘we’re coming back here soon, right!?’ And we’re really going to try.
Cornelia Fort Airpark
Since we first got the invitation to Alaska almost a year ago, we’ve felt a little bit like that dog who has a bone attached to its back. The trip just never seemed to get any closer.
As far as bucket list adventure places to explore, it’s always been fairly close to the top for both of us.
So, when we woke up today there was a definite ‘THIS IS THE DAY’ kind of feeling.
Bags packed, fridge emptied, cameras charged. Ready to set foot in a type of landscape that has so far evaded us.
That is, until we got a call to say the flight was cancelled and we would be travelling tomorrow instead.
The next couple of hours were spent on the phone to the airline, doing everything in our power to keep the Alaskan dream alive, but sadly, our two day adventure has been cut in half.
We didn’t let that dampen our spirits though, we had a quick caffeine refuelling and decided to head to Cornelia Fort Airpark, an abandoned airstrip just a couple of minutes from us. I honestly had no idea it was there until last week, and being the slight aviation nerd that I am, we decided to brave the 92F heat and check it out.
forrestplace 