The Well Worn Shoes

Wanderlust Welcome

  • Home
  • Start Here
    • About
    • Contact
    • Work With Me
    • Disclaimer
    • Affiliate Disclaimer
  • National Parks
    • Acadia
    • Yellowstone
    • Great Smoky Mountains
    • Grand Canyon
    • Utah National Parks
    • Badlands
  • Dog Friendly
  • Road Trips
    • One Day In Guides
    • Road Trip Itineraries
  • Destinations
    • United States
      • New England
      • Southwest
      • South
      • Mountain West
      • Midwest & Great Lakes
      • Mid-Atlantic
    • Canada
  • Gear
  • Shop
  • Fall Road Trip Packing List: What To Actually Bring

    Fall road trips are my favorite kind of road trip, and I say that as someone who lives in a truck-and-trailer combo 365 days a year. The light is better, the crowds thin out by mid-week, the dogs stop ...

    Read More

    Fall Road Trip Packing List: What To Actually Bring
  • The Ultimate Dog Hiking Gear List For National Parks

    If you're anything like me, your dog is your favorite hiking partner, and honestly? They're probably better at it than you are. Loki, Freya, and Caly have logged thousands of trail miles with us ...

    Read More

    The Ultimate Dog Hiking Gear List For National Parks
  • The Ultimate New England Fall Road Trip: A Six-State Foliage Loop (2026)

    I lived in New England for 7 years, which means I experienced 7 autumns. Seven rounds of watching the whole region turn absolutely feral with color for about three weeks and then go quiet for the ...

    Read More

    The Ultimate New England Fall Road Trip: A Six-State Foliage Loop (2026)
  • The Girls Trip Guide to Bar Harbor & Acadia National Park

    An honest, all-seasons guide from someone who lived there for six months I need to set expectations right up front, because I'd rather you hear this from me than find out at 9:30 on a Saturday ...

    Read More

    The Girls Trip Guide to Bar Harbor & Acadia National Park

National Parks

SHOP

Dog Friendly

Digital Nomad

October 19, 2021

The Most Dog Friendly National Parks

If you’ve traveled to many National Parks with your pups, then you know that in general, they are not very dog-friendly…

October 12, 2021

Upper Peninsula Waterfalls: One Day of Chasing Waterfalls on Michigan’s UP

The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is a wild and wonderful escape, but if I’m being totally honest, I didn’t know what to expect. I wasn’t anticipating anything extraordinary, but the UP absolutely blew me away.  There are more than 300 waterfalls scattered across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and it is home to all of the waterfalls in the Great Lakes State except for one…

September 14, 2021

Vermont Fall Bucket List

Vermont is nothing short of spectacular during the fall season. It’s one of those states that makes you want to come back time and time again. Incredibly clean, stunningly beautiful, and friendly, there really isn’t anything about Vermont that isn’t amazing…

August 31, 2021

The Best Fall Hikes in New Hampshire (Dog-Friendly, Easy to Hard)

Heading to New England this fall? Is there anything better than fall in New England? Nope! The crisp air, the crunchy leaves, and all those gorgeous reds, oranges, and yellows. There is absolutely nothing better than being in the mountains in the fall…

August 24, 2021

10 Best Things to Do at Badlands National Park

Badlands National Park might be one of the coolest, strangest, most underrated places in the entire country. The name says it all, for hundreds of years the Oglala Lakota called this harsh, otherworldly landscape mako sica, “bad land,” and the French fur trappers who came through agreed, dubbing it les mauvaises terres à traverser, “bad lands to traverse.” Standing out there, you get it instantly: no water, no shade, nothing but jagged spires for miles.

August 17, 2021

Things to Do in Salem, MA in October: An Honest Guide to the Witch City in Fall (2026)

An honest guide to Salem, Massachusetts in October 2026 from someone who lived down the road for seven years; what to do, what’s changed, and how to avoid the worst crowds.

  • ← Previous
  • 1
  • …
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • …
  • 16
  • Next →
Hi! I'm Vanessa, a 30 something, sunset chasing traveler. I'm here to inspire you to travel wherever, whenever, and with whoever you can. My Huskies, Loki and Freya are usually along for the ride. I have a soul that likes to wander, a desire to experience the unknown, and a curiousity to discover things off the beaten path. I hope you'll stick around for awhile!

Join the List

Let's be friends! I know e-mails can suck but mine won't and I promise cute pup photos too!

Connect

Recent Posts

  • Fall Road Trip Packing List: What To Actually Bring
  • The Ultimate Dog Hiking Gear List For National Parks
  • The Ultimate New England Fall Road Trip: A Six-State Foliage Loop (2026)
  • The Girls Trip Guide to Bar Harbor & Acadia National Park
  • Acadia National Park October Guide: Fall Colors, Weather & What to Pack

Categories

  • Destinations
  • History
  • National Park Love

Reader Favorites

Dog Friendly Yellowstone National Park – Bringing Your Dog To Yellowstone

One Fall Day in Salem, MA: An Hour-by-Hour Itinerary

14 Fun Things To Do In Asheville, North Carolina

On the Blog

  • Destinations
  • History
  • National Park Love

Join the List

The Well Worn Shoes is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Connect

If you were a 90s kid who watched Hocus Pocus appr If you were a 90s kid who watched Hocus Pocus approximately 847 times (like Me), this one’s for you. 😂🧙‍♀️

Because apparently I’m old enough to plan my Halloween around the filming locations of a movie I watched on VHS.

You can actually visit a bunch of the locations without spending your entire day in the car.

🛑🚫 A VERY Important PSA: Max & Dani’s House is someones actual home. Please don’t walk onto their property. Don’t go on the porch, don’t knock on the door. Be respectful.🚫🛑

It’s all in my Salem in October Cheat Sheet ($)

Comment SPELL and I’ll send you a direct link as soon as IG stops banning me!! But it’s at the link in bio and stories in the meantime 🧙‍♀️
🍁🍂 October in Acadia is the kind of pretty that ma 🍁🍂 October in Acadia is the kind of pretty that makes you pull over every five minutes.

It’s also the kind of busy that can have you questioning every life choice you made that led you to Park Loop Road at 11 a.m. 😂

I stayed on Mount Desert Island for 6 months, and October taught me one thing: timing matters.

Go midweek if you can. Start early. Have a backup plan for parking. Know when the shuttle stops running. Don’t assume peak foliage will show up on the same date every year. And maybe don’t try to cram 14 things into one day just because they all looked good on Instagram.

The payoff? Golden leaves, pink granite, cool ocean air, and those ridiculous Acadia views that make all the logistical nonsense worth it. 🍂

I put everything I wish I knew before visiting Acadia in Octobe, including foliage timing, crowds, Cadillac reservations, parking, what’s actually open, and how I’d plan the trip now into my Acadia in October guide.

🍁🍂 Save this for your Maine trip, then go read the full guide ($) before you start planning 🍂🍁 

Comment Fall and I’ll send you a direct link when Instagram decides to let me send links again (ASAP, hopefully 🤞)

Would you brave peak foliage crowds for this view, or give me a quieter week?
I didn’t expect much from the Upper Peninsula. The I didn’t expect much from the Upper Peninsula. Then I spent a day in a fairytale forest chasing waterfalls.

Sable Falls: 168 stairs to Lake Superior.
Miners Falls: an easy mile through the northwoods to a 40-foot drop.
Tahquamenon: 200 feet wide, root-beer brown

And then a ranger told me about Laughing Whitefish Falls on the way to dinner. It wasn’t even on my lis5, and somehow became my favorite waterfall in Michigan.

Fall is the best time to do this. Nobody tells you that about the UP either!

Save this for next October or this one if you’re already planning! The full waterfall day, with trail lengths, passes, and dog rules is on the blog.
10+ years ago, I started saving pictures of camper 10+ years ago, I started saving pictures of camper vans. Today, I bought one. 😂

Meet the newest member of our already questionable travel plan: a Ram ProMaster 2500, high roof, completely empty.

No bed. No kitchen. No cabinets.

So naturally, we’re going to build it ourselves, and document the good ideas, bad ideas, and decisions we’ll absolutely regret.

3 years of full-time RV life taught us something: the places we love most are usually the places Betty can’t go.

National Forest campgrounds. State parks. Tiny NPS loops. Forest roads that look at a 40-foot travel trailer and say, “absolutely not.”

Betty stays home.
The van gets the weekends. 
Loki is a huge fan! 😂

Two humans. Three dogs. One 40-foot RV. One completely empty van. 

Because apparently one home on wheels wasn’t enough. 

She doesn’t have a name yet.

So…what should we call her? 👀
I lived less than an hour from Salem for 7 years, I lived less than an hour from Salem for 7 years, and every October I watched the same thing: people driving downtown, circling for parking, and spending the day in the Witch Museum line.

A million visitors. One town of 45,000. Halloween on a Saturday and the 400th anniversary this year. It’s going to be a lot.

So I wrote the version I’d hand a friend or tell them over coffee, because that’s what I do here ☕️ 

Two different guides, actually. 

🎃👻 The Salem in October Cheat Sheet is 6 pages you keep on your phone: the train, the ticket release times, the Halloween-night rules, one perfect weekday hour by hour, and the real Hocus Pocus addresses. 

🍁🎃 The Ultimate Salem Guide is the whole thing the shops, the food and cider, the dog version, where to actually sleep, the 1692 history, and the other eleven months.

Comment Witch and I’ll send you links to the Cheat Sheet ($), Ultimate Guide ($), and 10 of my free blog posts about visiting Salem in October! 🎃🍁
Follow on Instagram

Copyright © 2026 The Well Worn Shoes · Theme by 17th Avenue