Random

Made it to the Front Page!

We’ve kind of been MIA lately – swamped with work in our “real lives” where we own and operate a shaved ice business on the beach. We moved from Michigan to Florida last June to buy Beach Snoballs – an artisan shaved ice shop across the street from the Gulf of Mexico in Treasure Island, Florida. I know, rough life, right? Spring breakers and tourists have consumed us this month but today, we made it to the FRONT PAGE of the local beach newspaper! The Pinellas Beaches Patch interviewed us and took some great pictures of our storefront and of us shaving/making a customer’s snoball. Click here to read our article!

Photo credit: Rachel Jolley of the Pinellas Beaches Patch

And a little side note: The businesses around Treasure Island are having a contest for Best Customer Service on the Beach. Beach Snoballs has made it to the Elite 8 but we need VOTES to move on to the next round. If you would be willing to take a few seconds to click the link below and vote for BEACH SNOBALLS in the contest, we would greatly appreciate your support.

http://goo.gl/NYC9d

You don’t have to have visited our shop before to vote – anyone can vote! And you can submit votes from multiple devices (phones, laptops, desktops, iPads, etc.). So the more votes we can accumulate between now and Monday at noon, the better! THANK YOU to all!

Categories: Beach, Beach Snoballs, Family, Florida, Food, News, Ocean, Outdoors, Photography, Planning vacation, Random, Summer, Summer Desserts, Top Knotch Gear, Tourist Site, Travel, Travel Tips, Trip planning, United States, Vegan, Vegetarian, Water, World Travel | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Travel Tip Tuesdays are Back!

Travel Tip for today: Sightseeing

If you’re like us, then you probably enjoy visiting tourist sites every now and again. Whether it’s for the pictures, the experience or the bragging rights to say, “I’ve been there!”, tourist traps can be lots of fun – if only they didn’t have so many…. tourists! Here’s a tip: Go during lunch. Most tour companies (you know, those ones with the large groups of loud people all wearing the matching hats) will take a break from their touring for lunch and it will give you the perfect chance to see the site(s) up close or to snag the coveted photo op without everyone else in your way.

Happy sightseeing!

Categories: Adventure, Africa, Asia, Backpacking, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, Circumnavigation, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Easter Island, Europe, Explore, Family, Faroe Islands, Germany, Globetrotting, Great Wall of China, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Italy, Japan, Laos, Latin America, Luxembourg, Moai Statues, Mountains, Myanmar, Nature, Nepal, Netherlands, Night Market, Norway, Outdoors, Panama, Parachute Cord, Paracord, Paracord Pet Gear, Paracord Pet Supplies, Paracord Watch, Photography, Planning vacation, Puerto Rico, Random, Rock Climbing, Russia, Samoa, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, Snorkeling, South America, Summer, Survival gear, Switzerland, Sydney, Taiwan, Thailand, Top Knotch Gear, Tourist Site, Trails, Transportation, Travel, Travel help, Travel Tips, Trip planning, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam | Leave a comment

Almost 1K Sales!

Top Knotch Gear has nearly 1,000 online sales! At just under a year and a half old, TKG has 996 sales from adventurers, survivalists and gear fanatics like YOU! We’re so grateful to have such an awesome following of explorers because each purchase through TKG helps fund our trip around the world! (Each purchase except our charity gear – those proceeds are donated).

Thank you, thank you, thank you for helping build Top Knotch Gear into a successful online shop for knotted survival gear and outdoor accessories. We couldn’t have made it this far without you!

As part of our appreciation for our customers, we’d like to extend a 20% off coupon to use at our store – just type in coupon code TATW2014 (Trip Around The World) at checkout!

Categories: Accessories, Adventure, American Red Cross, Backpacking, Benefit, Bracelet, Bright colors, Business, Circumnavigation, Donation, Explore, Global Aid, Globetrotting, Hiking, Knots, Mountains, Outdoors, Packing, Parachute Cord, Paracord, Paracord Dog Collar, Paracord Pet Gear, Paracord Pet Supplies, Paracord Watch, Pets, Random, Snorkeling, South America, Top Knotch Gear, Trails, Travel, Travel help, Travel Tips | Leave a comment

CYBER MONDAY SPECIALS ALL DAY!

***CYBER MONDAY SPECIALS ALL DAY AT TOP KNOTCH GEAR!***

  • 8:00am-2:00pm (EST) – 25% OFF entire purchase with code CYBERKNOTCH
  • 2:00pm-6:00pm (EST) – FREE matching key chain with every purchase – no code needed
  • 6:00pm-11:59pm (EST) – FREE SHIPPING on all order with code CYBERGEAR

Check out http://www.etsy.com/shop/TopKnotchGear to start your shopping!

Categories: Accessories, Adventure, Backpacking, Bracelet, Bright colors, Caving, Chain Knot, Circumnavigation, Cyber Monday, Etsy, Family, Globetrotting, Jewelry, Knots, Mountains, Naturalist, Nature, Outdoors, Parachute Cord, Paracord, Paracord Pet Gear, Paracord Pet Supplies, Paracord Watch, Pets, Random, Rock Climbing, Survival gear, Top Knotch Gear, Trails, Travel | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

ROAD TRIP!!!

So tomorrow (Friday) we’re leaving at sunrise to begin our adventure down to Florida! For those of you who haven’t read or heard, September’s family bought a beachside business in Treasure Island, Florida (on the Gulf side of the state – about 15 minutes away from St. Petersburg) and we’re moving down to go run it! [See the post about 'Relocating to Florida' for more info.]

We’ve packed up our apartment. We’ve stuffed the car. We’re trying to get our bunny in her pet carrier for the ride (she’s very stubborn and doesn’t like to be contained) and we’re shutting the door (for now) to our life in Michigan. We’ll drive all day down to Conyers, Georgia (about 13 hours) where we’ll spend the night with September’s sister and her family. Then, we’ll be back up Saturday morning to make the rest of the drive to St. Petersburg, Florida where we’ll be living! The trip is a little over 1,234 miles (crazy – 1,234…)

We start at point A - our apartment in Michigan. We'll drive to Georgia (Point B) and then end up in our new home in Florida - Point C!

We sure will  miss Michigan, especially the Michigan summer. But we have a fantastic adventure ahead of us! We’ll try to update the blog while we trek down south, so check back again! And we’ll definitely put up new pictures once we get settled and situated in Florida.

Sunset on Lake Michigan in Grand Haven.

Thanks everyone for your support and safe travels!

~September & Morgan

 

 

 

Categories: Adventure, Business, Explore, Family, Florida, Landscape Photograph, Michigan, Nature, Outdoors, Packing, Photography, Random, Stumble Upon, Summer, Top Knotch Gear, Transportation, Travel, Travel Photography, Trip planning, Uncategorized, United States, Water | 1 Comment

Insight to Hiking Naked: An Article Written by a Nude Hiker Himself

We’ve seen a ton of hits over the past couple of days from our post about nude hiking in Germany and the Supreme Court debate about nude hiking in Switzerland. (We had no idea the Time Magazine article would be so popular among some our viewers!). For those of you interested in hiking naked in the United States, here is a link to an article written by a man in the Yukon who hikes nude (warning, there are some photos but no “inappropriate” body parts can be seen.) It’s an interesting perspective if you have an open mind.

Read the article here: http://www.yukonalaska.com/nudehiking/ 

Also, if you’re looking for a survival bracelet to match the color of your birthday suit, we have some colors of paracord that may blend in quite nicely with flesh tones! Stop by our online store to see the survival bracelets and get yours today!

Categories: Adventure, Backpacking, Debate, Europe, Explore, Family, Germany, Globetrotting, Hiking, Mountains, Naked Hiking, Naturalist, Nude Hiking, Outdoors, Photography, Plants and Flowers, Random, Stumble Upon, Summer, Supreme Court, Switzerland, Top Knotch Gear, Tourist Site, Trails, Travel, Trip planning, United States | 2 Comments

Road Trip Snacks – What do you Eat?

We’re getting ready for our big cross-country road trip down south to our new home in Florida but we’re looking for good ideas for snacks. What do you pack when you’re going on a road trip or plane ride? Any suggestions for must-haves in our cooler? We’re both vegetarian (so no beef jerky, unfortunately) but we’re pretty low maintenance! If you have any ideas, we’d love to hear them!

We’d prefer not to stop at fast food joints in an effort to save money and time. So far, our list of good east consists of:

  • Healthy wraps (hummus, spinach, lettuce, sliced cheese, shredded carrots, baked tofu and possibly a lite dressing)
  • Trail mix (thanks to my awesome mother who sent a road trip package to us yesterday. Thanks, mom!
  • Coke and Mountain Dew (we need caffeine somehow!)
  • Sliced apples
  • Small container of cheese spread (Morgan eats cheese religiously!)
  • Pretzels and crackers to go with the Morgan’s cheese spread (Thanks again, mom!)
  • Candy (Jr. Mints for September and Reese’s for me… because a sugar buzz is a good thing.)

We figure this list should cover us for the all-day trip down to Atlanta, Georgia on Friday (13 hours) and the rest of our drive from Atlanta to St. Pete, Florida on Saturday.

Photo courtesy of Cooking Light Magazine

Categories: Adventure, Backpacking, Beach, Camping, Circumnavigation, Drink, Explore, Family, Florida, Food, Hiking, Outdoors, Packing, Planning vacation, Random, Summer, Summer Recipes, Top Knotch Gear, Tourist Site, Trails, Transportation, Travel, Travel help, Travel Tips, Trip planning, Uncategorized, United States | 5 Comments

VERY COOL Map Pillows from MyBeardedPigeon

A fellow crafter on Etsy called MyBeardedPigeon(from Australia), makes these awesome world map pillows! She has maps of nearly every continent and many of the 50 U.S. states, so if there’s a country or part of the world you want to feel close to, check out her store at http://www.etsy.com/shop/mybeardedpigeon?ref=pr_shop! These snuggly pillows are just too cool, we had to share them with you all!

Photo courtesy of mybeardedpigeon

Photo courtesy of mybeardedpigeon

Categories: Accessories, Adventure, Africa, Asia, Australia, Backpacking, Bright colors, Business, Circumnavigation, Etsy, Europe, Explore, Family, Gear, Globetrotting, Home or Houses, Photography, Random, Sleep, South America, Stumble Upon, Summer, Top Knotch Gear, Travel, Travel Tips, Trip planning | Leave a comment

Travel Tip Tuesday!

Travel tip #15: When traveling long distance in countries that offer trains or high speed rail systems, consider traveling at NIGHT. This way, you do not lose a day of sight-seeing AND you save on the cost of a hotel/hostel for that night. The same tip can be applied to flights, too. When we fly long distance, we try to book red eye flights so we’re able to maximize our time at our destination.

Train ride at night - photo from Pixdaus

Categories: Adventure, Africa, Airplanes, Asia, Australia, Backpacking, China, Circumnavigation, Europe, Explore, Globetrotting, Hiking, Japan, Mountains, Nature, Outdoors, Photography, Planning vacation, Random, Stumble Upon, Summer, Top Knotch Gear, Tourist Site, Transportation, Travel, Travel help, Travel Tips, Trip planning, United Kingdom, United States | Leave a comment

Naked Hiking in Germany

For most Americans, the thought of hiking in your birthday suit or catching a glimpse of a fellow hiker nude in nature would be alarming – given our prudent, rather body-conscious beliefs about the natural human form. Nude hiking is not all that uncommon in Europe, though. Switzerand allows hiking in the nude but is currently debating the ammenity with its Supreme Court. Last year, Germany opened its first nude hiking trail near the town of Dankerode (about 3 hours outside of Berlin, for those unfamiliar with German geography). Apparently, there were signs at the trailhead that read, “If you don’t want to run into any naked people, stop right here!” Seen as a “paradise for nude hikers” the naked trail is causing some scuffles between German naturalists (the nature-lovers, etc.) and traditionalists (everyone else). As you can imagine, there’s plenty to debate over the issue of “bodily freedom”. The trail is right by a family campsite and the owner of the campsite, who originally welcomed the idea of a luxury trail as added revenue, has since changed his mind when it comes to family camping in the nude. Hot words are exchanged, labels are given but what are your thoughts on nude hiking – in Germany or other parts of the world?

Read the original article from Time here:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2076783,00.html?artId=2076783?contType=article?chn=world

Hiking in the nude in Germany. Photo courtesy of Matthias Bein.

 

 

 

Categories: Adventure, Backpacking, Camping, Debate, Europe, Explore, Family, Germany, Hiking, Naked Hiking, Naturalist, Nature, Nude Hiking, Outdoors, Photography, Random, Stumble Upon, Summer, Supreme Court, Switzerland, Top Knotch Gear, Tourist Site, Trails, Transportation, Travel, Trip planning, United States | 1 Comment

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