Five years ago, my husband and I climbed Mt. Fuji, the highest volcano in Japan at 12,388 ft.  Mt. Fuji is actually a dormant volcano that last erupted in 1708.

This was an epic trip for me. In the telling of this story about our adventure, it’s important to give you some background on what it’s like to climb Fuji-San (Mr. Fuji).

It was a Buddhist monk in 700 A.D. who first climbed Mt. Fuji. A temple was built at the summit 400 years later. It became a pilgrimage site for Japanese. In 1860, the first foreigner climbed Mt. Fuji.

In 1868, Lady Parkes, an Englishwoman, defied a ban on women climbers and ascended the peak. The ban was lifted afterward. What a badass woman :).

It was my husband’s idea. Thom had dreamed about this climb even before we moved to Okinawa in 2013.  He’d always said, “I’m gonna climb Mt. Fuji.   

I really didn’t want to go on this trek. I heard about the hike from people who had climbed as well as those who hadn't. It's a thing that many Japanese do every Ju...

 "In every journey or adventure, there will be the unexpected, the low points, the funky stuff that happens. This is true for travel or for life. And there are always lessons to be learned." 

In 2015, my husband and I visited our son and his family in the tiny South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. We were stoked to be so close to an active volcano. The events that happened were, shall we say, a little scary.

It all started a little bit wonky, and it was the beginning of our trip to see the live volcano on Tanna in the South Pacific island of Vanuatu.

That tropical morning, we got off the plane from Efate, the main island of Vanuatu, and arrived by plane an hour later on the island of Tanna. I pulled out my reservation sheet and, for the life of me, could not find the name of the hotel we were booked in. People were everywhere, pushing, shoving, and loading up people and baskets in trucks.

A Ni Vanuatu man ran up to us and grabbed the papers out of my hands. I’m not even sure he co...