WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Off the Trails: Top 5 Moments of 2025

Episode Date: January 17, 2026

Join Nicole Sighiartau and Storm Drexler as they discuss some of their wildest experiences in the great outdoors! This week they talk about their top 5 outdoor adventures from 2025!

You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Welcome to Off the Trails. Happy New Year. It's me Storm Drexler. And I'm Nicole Sagiarthau, and we'll be your adventure buddies every week as we discuss some of our wildest stories from our outdoor endeavors. Welcome to 2026. 2.26. We're back. You know what's crazy? It's been a year since we've started this podcast. Oh my gosh. Wait, really?

Yeah, I'm serious because we started last January. One year anniversary? Yeah. We have to reminisce about the year. Oh, I guess we do. Is that what we're doing? That is what we're doing. We are doing our top five adventures from 2026.

And I think... For 25. Sorry, 2025. From our first full year of Off the Trails, we're discussing our bestest and most wildest times we've had in the great outdoors. I'm going to keep talking about Nicole corrects my audio because I'm loud, guys. I'm the loud part of the show. He is very loud. Now, you might have heard some of these stories because obviously we talk about outdoor adventures every week and we're not always

climbing new mountains, but we still want to do our top five, and I think there will be some new stuff in there that you haven't heard about. True. I know there's at least one big thing in there. There's at least one big thing you guys don't know about. So stay tuned because that's last. Yeah, that's the very last thing. That's like my highlight, highlight. It's a big old doozy. I have a trail marker for the first time ever. I just thought of just now. I was walking around earlier today. And oh, I have a new year's news resolutions. One of them kind of relates to this. walk around more. I'm going to take more walks because when I'm at home and Georgia, I walk a lot.

I probably do 45 minutes, hour long walks daily. And here I walk to the places I need to go. I don't do anything more than that, but I want to do more than that. So I'm going to start doing my walks here as well, weather permitting. So your little hot girl walks? A little hot girl walks to keep my figure. Definitely. Do you listen to like girly music or podcasts?

I listen to Kesha and I walk around. No, but I do want to do that. But anyway, in one of my walks today, I was actually walking back from the station earlier. And I turned and a bunch of snow flew down my shirt and I got really cold. And that's your trail marker. That's my trail marker. I was all alone and I felt really stupid. I could see you like bringing your arms out to the side and like shaking your.

Yeah, my coat doesn't like cover my like. So like my sweatshirt was like kind of like blowing in the wind and like a bunch of snow went straight down to my onto my shirt. And my one chest hair stood on end. Um, so I had a different trail marker, but actually your story reminded me of my run on, um, uh, Thursday. She's shin splint free, folks. Uh, stress fracture. They're different. Sorry, stress fracture, fracture free folks. Uh, I think so. Yeah, I've been running since, uh, late December, and so I'm slowly bringing it back. And so I went on a run on Thursday. And it was, I know, it was Wednesday. It was snowing and really, really cold. And ice froze on my eyelashes and my cheeks. And I took a

picture all I was running because I was like this feels like my whole face is frozen and I want to see later and obviously I can't look in a mirror right now and sure enough there's just like that's so cutesy no it wasn't it was really cold and like like caked with ice my eyelashes and my cheeks that sounds kind of awesome like I bet it be you were you were in pain but I bet you looked cool I don't know Andrew was like you shouldn't do that anymore because you're going to get frostbite and die on me yeah yeah you will yeah all right top five Outdoor moments of the year. We're going to go back and forth?

You have to go first. All right. My fifth one. Dude, if I steal one of these for me, that's funny. Because I think the only one we have crossover is my fifth one. My fifth one's the Indiana Dunes trip. We talked about it in the podcast. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it.

But we went to the Indiana Dunes and it was fun. It was terrible because they were all wet the whole time because it was raining. And you guys can listen to that episode. We had Andrew and Nate and Liam on to talk about that, friends of the show. And we do a whole episode on it. But it was a great moment because I got corn, on me and mostly because I got to spend time with some of my best friends in the world.

That was a really fun trip. And you know what? I'll make that my honorable mention because I didn't even think about that. That's a good one. But it was, that was super fun. Yeah. The actual hiking up wet sand part was less than fun. Well, less than fun. But Andrew and I also went to the lake and that was fun because we went in the water while it was raining and there was lightning. And so that was cool. Yes. Um, my top five also is a little friend trip. It was my up north trip with Jesse and Aubriana, two of my best friends here. And Aubriana's family has a little cabin up there. So we went up to the cabin and we went kayaking and jet skiing. And we did like a two-day mini trip to Mackinac Island. And I've never been to Northern Michigan before. And like everyone

of the U.P, as they call it. Well, we didn't quite cross over the bridge into the U.P. I guess technically we drove over, but then we just drove right back. But everyone from Michigan is like, oh, you have to go up north. It's amazing up there. And I went and I was like, give you a review. my gosh, it is amazing. Yeah, that's what I expected. And like southern Michigan where we are pretty lame and boring, but up there, there's like actual hills, trees everywhere, lots of little lakes. The Great Lakes are amazing. Because you're near in the Yukon, Lundy. I don't know what you just said. You're nearing the Yukon. Oh, okay. The Great and Wild North. Yes. And Mackinac Island had a little path all away around the island, and so I ran around the island, and that was really fun. So that was just overall

highlight. Good trip with the girls. I've never done a little good. girls trip like that. It was awesome. Little girl trip. Little girl trip. That's awesome. No parents. Not that not that like we were like doing anything bad, but we're like, we can go to bed whenever we want. We can stay up talking late. We can wake up whenever we want. There's no rules. You're a 12 year old at heart and I love it. I don't know if I'm so well. No rules. No rules. That's what made it one of the best parts of my year. That's awesome. I bet that was a blast. Yeah. My fourth place is in this past late, early September, late August, I think it was, which was my first time ever going to the Great Lakes. I went over, I had been here for two years and I still hadn't gone over, and we went over to Lake Michigan.

And next to every lake, I don't know that Indiana Dunes had this, I didn't go down them, but next to the side of them, there's a giant pile of sand that surrounds them. Yes. And so you have to go all the way down it. And then when you go back up, it's very, very bad. But we went into the lakes and we saw tons and tons of barges out in the water. And then we got to hike around on those dunes. This was pre the Indiana Dunes trip, and that was a blast. That was when we first got back to school over here, this year, with Starritt and Jones and Ashley Burdow, shout out.

Yeah, it was great time. What part of Lake Michigan? Because you know Indiana Dunes borders Lake Michigan? It was. It was like further north? Like, Sagatuck? Yeah. That area?

That sounds correct, yeah. Okay. It was my first time being in a Great Lake. And I don't know, man. coming from a guy who's around oceans a lot, a little underwhelming, I would say. But it was freshwater and that was cool. Yeah, no, the freshwater aspect is nice. And honestly, like, the waves can get big.

People surf on the Great Lakes in winter, which blows my mind. That's so tough. They wear, like, full-body wetsuits covering their face. And I don't know if they have, like, goggles or something so their eyes don't freeze. I don't know. It's insane. And they have, like, mittens. It's really funny.

They're, like, paddling with gloves or mittens on. But they're, like, neoprene, so you can serve with them. So that's my fourth slide. That's a pretty good one. My number four is Easter break. I went home for like, I went home for like three days and it was awesome. I'm so glad I did it. And my dad and I went skiing. I think for, it was two days. And it was perfect spring skiing conditions like 40, 50 degrees, no wind, tons of snow. We did car camping. We had like a little stove that we made her food on. And it was. And no rules. And no rules. And it was. And it was. It was so, so fun. So that was definitely the highlight, like, favorite ski trip of the year by far. I am becoming so much more of a fan of spring skiing. Like, I hate being cold.

I do hate being cold. I do appreciate, like, good winter snow, but at the same time, spring skiing, the snow's not that bad. No. It's awesome. And, like, the sun is out the whole day. It's not, like, getting dark at 4 o'clock when you're finishing your last run in January. So that would definitely be my number four. Ignore.

My alarm just went off, sorry. Alarm. I have to take a picture, guys. This is one of my New Year's resolutions. I can actually talk about this in the show. One of my other New Year resolutions is I have to take a picture every day at 6 p.m. And it's 6 p.m. So we're going to take a...

Every day at 6 p.m. Oh, wait, you're not in it. There we go. It's funny that this will be mid-podcast. I took that photo. Nice. Yep, every day at 6 p.m. Anyway, you were talking about your ski trip.

How bad? No, I think that's pretty much it. And then we went home for Easter and it was beautiful at home in California. So, yeah, no, that was definitely an awesome number four. That's super duper goaded. My number three slot for 2025 outdoor thingy majiggers is got to be in March when we, on spring break of this past year, when we went down to Florida. And we explored Fort Pickens, the Civil War Fort that it's really cool. That actually wasn't the cool part.

The cool part was that there was a post-Civil War, in between the World Wars, built bunker out in kind of the woods nearby on the island. And so we trekked out there, found the old overgrown, like, giant artillery bunker where there's like a little giant slit above it for a huge cannon or something to go to that can shoot down any aircraft. They were worried that people might invade Florida. Oh, okay. Or whatever. So there was lots of things built on the different coast of the United States during that time. And we explored it. We hacked through some brambles and, like, hiked all the way around the back of the bunker and, like, found a old door and, like, tried to bust it down.

but it was not going to bust down. Really? Yeah. And then we just went and we hiked up on top of it. And it was a really cool view of the ocean. And we could see Fort Pickens, which was the Civil War Fort way down the way, which had humongous cannons as well on it.

And that was sick. That's really cool. I think you mentioned this briefly back in March, but I don't think you gave as much details you did just now. Yes. It was a blast. It was very, very funny. Who'd you go to?

Go with. That was a whole crew of friends back home, but faces you may know, such as Nate Gallagher, co-host of Boys and Lee Blattner, friend of the show, friend of me. Friend of the show. Among others were there and good friends from other colleges.

Nice. Yeah, it was a great old time. You are listening to Off the Trails on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. My number three is the Langley trip that I did with my dad and Andrew. So Andrew flew out to California end of July. Oh, I remember those. This was fun. Yeah.

He climbed his first 14er, which was Mount Langley, which incidentally was also my first 14er. I just happened to do it like a little bit earlier than him. And so we did Langley. I think we spent one night up there and then we went to Mammoth and showed him around Mammoth a little bit, the minarets, went to all the lakes, Convict Lake. But I would have to say definitely the highlight of the trip was driving up the other side of the Owens Valley into the White Mountains. And it was a crazy drive, if I remember correctly. Very crazy drive.

Like Rocky the entire way, very off road. And Andrew drove all of it. And so we got to the White Mountain Trailhead just so we could look around there. So what's his test that your dad gave out? Yeah, it was a pretty serious test. And then we went over to the bristlecone pine forest, which has like some of the oldest trees in the world, if not the oldest. But obviously they don't tell you which one it is because otherwise people would be rude and cut it down or something.

Yeah. And then we ended up spending the night. kind of on an overlook looking towards the sierras because the Owens valley lies between the sierras and the white mountains and we had the most incredible sunset and my dad and I have camped there once before and also had like the most gorgeous sunset ever and yes we've only been there twice but I would say if you want a good sunset in the sierras like looking at the entire range from up high you need to drive up there and spend the night and the stars were just incredible because you're kind of away from the little cities that are in the Owens Valley. I mean, I guess Bishop's kind of close. But just all the stars looking out towards the east are really, really pretty. And it's,

it's a beautiful slice of the Sierra's that most people don't know about. So that was really fun. Oh, and we went to Death Valley on the way out. And it got up to like 110 degrees because it was August at that point. You know, I would take that over what we have now. Really? I would rather be baked, char grilled and broiled than frozen. into an ice cube. Today was not that bad. When I walked over to the station, I was like, oh, I'm not cold. This morning I was cold, but my walkover just now was not horrendous. Yeah. I think it's obvious that like we'd rather get frozen to death than burned alive, but I'd rather be too hot more often than too cold. I don't know about getting frozen to death.

Apparently it numbs you and then you just kind of peacefully fade. Oh, and then you just kind of peacefully fade. whereas if you load on fire, it's every nerve destroyed one by one. Oh, oh, yeah, no, no, thank you. Yeah, not a good time. That's pretty awful. Speaking of every nerve destroyed one by one, my second slot has nothing to do with that.

I'm taking a note from Nate and doing insane segways. My two seed, my second slot has to go to, I'm the second to right now, my Gettysburg trip. I went to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania this year, last year, I guess, in 2025 in August, and hiked the whole back. battlefield, every single last bit of it over the course of three days, four days, four days.

Over four days, we hiked the entire battlefield, including the little roundtop. It's not a mountain hill. Hill. Okay. Big hill. Yeah. And the other hills too. And it was super duper, duper cool.

And it was crazy to be like, to like, we had Dr. Jennings, shout out of Hillslow College with us doing the tour. And he would like walk us through the different charges that were done on both the Union and the Confederate side and then show like where the pivotal moments happened. And it was really special because he pointed out where Hillsdale College students had fought and had fought and had fought and been killed. That's really cool. And so that was really neat and really impactful. And the hikes were great. It was beautiful. As we drove from Hillsdale to Gettysburg, it just got more and more beautiful. And I was like, oh yes, the East Coast. This is very, very nice. I remember why it's so great

over here. And the Pennsylvania countryside was extremely epic. And it was cool. So the hills, I imagine those didn't have trees? Or were there like trees nearby? They did. But it was, yeah, it was lightly wooded. There were some wood lots.

A lot of it was kind of farmland. Okay. But still like roving farmland. Like Pennsylvania is ridge country. So there's like lots of like rows of ridges. So they would have like line up on a ridge and then look half a mile or a third of a mile over to the other ridge and see the other lines over there, which today we could just shoot them from that far away.

But back then, nothing was accurate enough besides really long range artillery to shoot them. So you could see the guys you were fighting until you started shooting and then trillions of clouds of smoke. Yeah. But the walks was really cool. It was, we did it in August, which is around the time the battle would have happened. I think it was late summer. And so it was cool to walk in the sweltering Pennsylvania heat, climbed the things. And imagine wearing like triple the weight you were wearing and putting yourself in the shoes of the suit.

Civil War warrior. Well, I think it's, I mean, I've been to Boston, and like, obviously they have a lot of historical stuff there, and I went during Thanksgiving one time and also in August. And you're right, like, the time of year really impacts the way that you experience it. Because, like, Boston Massacre, that's winter, right? And so when we were there over Thanksgiving, it was cold, and I was like, wow, this is what it would have been like. But then summer, I can't think of an event happening during the summer, but also, like,

I know I've read in history books, like, just the sweltering heat of Boston. And yeah, definitely. Like, you really experienced that. Yep. Yeah. It was legendary. What's your second spot? My number two is climbing Mount Williamson.

We also did a whole episode about this. But just overall, such a highlight. Like, that was a mountain that really pushed me. And I had such a great time with my dad. And it was awesome. That's really all I have to say about it. But, like, definitely has to be number two. I remember that one.

That was a legendary climb. And like so, so beautiful. So, yeah. My number one seed. Don't worry. Her number one seed doesn't. But mine does have a whole episode about it. So I will, but I have extra things to say about this one because this was my favorite thing outdoors I did this year.

When we had Marihanna and Margaret Runkey on the show, we talked about this one at the end of the summer. Over the summer in July, me and my friends back home built and constructed out of things we bought at stores a boat. equipped a full electric motor. It was like basically a mega picnic table size with huge barrels underneath it strapped with straps and we built all the boards together and screwed in the screws and built it from basically nothing. The plank sinatra. The plank sinatra.

What a good name. That's a good boat name. And we took it up to a lake in North Carolina, which I'm forgetting the name of presently, and smashed a can of beer against it. Took it on a maiden voyage and all of us, all the friends that built it could sit on it. That's awesome. Dip our feet in the water in the middle. It's very, very, very cool.

And then get chased by a lightning storm. And then get chased by a lightning storm. You want to hear the story of how our friend Margaret almost got struck by lightning. Go listen to that episode. But that was one of the more legendary things we did, not necessarily just because it was outdoors, but also because it bonded our friend group very much. That is such a good number one. We built it in a week.

So we built it Tuesday, Thursday, or Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. and then Friday was the maiden voyage as we took as we transported it with our friend Tad, friend of the show. Everyone's a friend of the show. Shout out Tad. Shout out Tad. With our friend Tad's trailer that he uses

to usually move around his lawn machines, his lawn care machines for his landscaping business that he has. So it was pretty legendary to see something that we put together, be buoyant and carry me on water. So that was probably my favorite outdoor moment of 2025.

And I saw your 2026 bingo list and you have a bingo spot in relation to Plank Sinatra. I made a 2026 bingo of things I think are going to happen. We'll see if any or all of them happen. And one I have is that we use Plank Sinatra again, at least get a certain number. I think I put like six to eight friend group members back on Plank Sinatra this summer, which I'm hoping we'll get the chance to do because it's still sitting up there in the lake. That's such a good number one. My number one is very surprising.

I got engaged over winter break. You're just going to go out with it? You're not going to end of the story? No. Guys, my co-host is engaged, not to me. No, not to Storm. No, we have respect to. To her awesome fiancé, Andrew Hawkin.

He's the best guys. He is really the best. I mean, I'm biased. But, yeah, no, I went to Montana over winter break, end of December, early January. To quote unquote, surprise him. To surprise him. surprise him. It was supposed to be a surprise. His parents wanted to fly me out. And then

Andrew, I guess, told them that we wanted to get married at some point. And they were like, oh, well, you should propose to her because she's coming out here. And so Andrew on Monday, I got their Sunday, who was like, let's go for a hike. And I was like, sure, why not? Let's go for a hike. And it was really gray and cloudy, probably like 18 degrees, 20 degrees when we started. and like a very snowy mountain is called Glacier Viewpoint Mountain and we were like trudging through the snow. Port Andrew was going first. He was breaking trail. I had to take these massive steps to step over the snow and like create little footholds for me to walk in. I mean, that would have happened anyway. It wasn't like he was intentionally doing that. Yeah. But we it was around five miles

round trip, 3,000 plus feet of elevation. And after about a mile you get into this ridge and you're just going up the ridge and the wind started picking up and it was so, so cold and my hands were literally frozen. Like I couldn't hold my hiking poles by the time we got to the top, which we didn't get to the actual top. We got to a little second fall summit and just called it because we were so cold. And when we got up there, Andrew's like, let's take a picture. And I was like, okay, let's take a picture and let's go. And so he sets up his phone to take a video so we could just pull screenshots from the video. Which, by the way, brilliant play. Brilliant idea. But might I add, like I we've been doing this for a while and it was my idea initially but still good job Andrew

it was not your idea no it was your idea like to he said it was his idea no I've to take to do the video well okay probably in that situation but in the past we've set up a video and then we'll go stand take pictures and we just pull screenshots because it's so much easier than doing a timer that is so much easier yeah so he did a video and we're looking at the mountains and then I was really distracted I was like looking around, also freezing, and then all of a sudden, I was like, oh, we're engaged. It just happened that fast. Did you turn back around and he was on one knee? No, I was kind of looking his way, but I was looking off to the left and he like grabbed my

arm. And like in his eyes, I could see like focus, pay attention. And then, yeah, down on one knee. Oh my God. Proposed. I was like, yes. Dude, that's the greatest thing. It was so fun.

And then thankfully on the way down, we made it down in one hour. Round trip, I think it took like three and a half hour. We were speedy. Speed run engagement. We were speedy on going up and down. But yeah, no, definitely it was a highlight. And then the rest of the trip to Montana was so fun. We did a couple more hikes.

Just got to enjoy the snow. They had puppies. And it's beautiful over there. Well, much love to you and you're betrothed. I assume this means you'll be bequeathing me the podcast. Bequeathing me the podcast. Giving it to me as you move on to the next stage of life. This is not ending.

Oh, thank God. You don't know how worried I've been since you. Storm was probably like, darn it, I wanted it to be over. No, no. Anything to free me from the trail markers? From the trail markers. Well, we're kind of running long, but no, it was definitely a wonderful 2025 for both of us.

And 2026 is here. More off, more the, and way more trails. Way more trails, way more adventures. So thank you so much for listening last year and continuing to listen to this year to off the trails on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. We hope you have a great week and make time to go outside and enjoy the great outdoors. We'll see you out there. Happy trails. 2026, baby they ain't ready.

Bye, guys.