Dries Buytaert

Photos

My life in photos: the people I love and the places we go.

A man rests his hand on his chin while examining a tangle of colorful wires.
Stefaan used an ESP32 to build a light pole with LED strips that react to music. When it stopped working, Ben started tinkering.

· Barvaux

A family washing dishes together in soapy basins at a campsite, with a van in the background.
Only when you're camping does washing the dishes become part of the fun.

· Barvaux

A man and two young children make coffee with a portable press at a table in front of a camper van.
When you're camping, coffee takes three times as long to make but tastes three times as good.

· Barvaux

A full moon glows over a fog-covered meadow framed by silhouetted trees.
The moon rising over a meadow covered in mist.

· Barvaux

A woman prepares drinks inside a camper van with its sliding door open on a rainy day.
Anneleen gets the aperitif ready in her van while it rains outside.

· Barvaux

Numbered gondolas of a Ferris wheel against a muted teal sky, with the metal spoke framework visible.
Early in the evening, the Ferris wheel was already turning, but no one had arrived yet. Nights tend to start later in Albania.

· Albania

A man leaps off a wooden dock into the ocean as a woman in sunglasses swims nearby watching.
Stan does a backflip off the dock while Vanessa watches from the water.

· Albania

Wooden beehives in green and yellow on a dry grassy hillside.
One day, I'd love to have a few beehives of my own.

· Albania

Tourists stroll and sit at cafes on a cobblestone street lined with shops in an old town.
Gjirokastër's UNESCO-listed historic center is known for its cobbled streets and Ottoman-era stone houses.

· Albania

Woman in a red dress and sunglasses holding up a glass of red wine at an outdoor restaurant during golden hour.
We had a great dinner at a family-run restaurant in the hills near Berat. They made their own wine and cheese, raised their own chickens, and grew their own vegetables.

· Albania

A small stone church with a wooden shingle roof and cross-topped steeple set against rugged mountains.
Kisha e Thethit, the small church at the heart of Theth.

· Albania

A hiker with a backpack stands on a rocky peak with arms outstretched, facing a vast range of green and gray mountains.
Stan looks out across the Albanian Alps while hiking the trail between Theth and Valbona.

· Albania

A hiker holds a pole flying the Albanian flag at a mountain pass, with jagged peaks behind him.
Stan holds the Albanian flag at the summit of the Theth to Valbona Pass.

· Albania

Boats and crowds fill Amsterdam's canals for the WorldPride 2026 Canal Parade.
We stopped in Amsterdam for a couple of days without realizing it was WorldPride. The city was packed with happy people, and it was nice to see everyone celebrating together.

· Miscellaneous

A person uses their phone to photograph a mountain sunset, with a hut visible to the right.
At sunset, everyone at Lakes of the Clouds Hut stepped outside and took the same photo.

· Presidential Traverse

Wooden trail sign reading "Crawford Path (AT)" atop a mountain, with an alpine lake and hazy ridgelines in the background.
Leaving Lakes of the Clouds, we rejoined the Crawford Path, which carries the Appalachian Trail toward Mount Washington.

· Presidential Traverse

A helicopter flies near a mountain hut and alpine pond, with rocky terrain and hazy ridgelines in the background.
Lakes of the Clouds Hut looked peaceful from above, but the helicopter flying beside it was evacuating a hiker who had fallen ill after a difficult climb up.

· Presidential Traverse

A stacked stone cairn marks a rocky mountain trail overlooking hazy ridges and a small white hut in the valley below.
The trail down from Mount Washington is a long scramble over broken rock. The small white building below is Lakes of the Clouds Hut, tucked beneath Mount Monroe, with Mount Eisenhower and Mount Pierce in the distance.

· Presidential Traverse

A weather station building with large satellite dishes and antenna at the top of a rocky summit.
After hours of hiking, we reached the summit of Mount Washington, where we found a weather station, satellite dishes, and tourists who had driven up. Sharing the highest summit with people who had simply driven there felt strangely anticlimactic.

· Presidential Traverse

A wooden trail sign marks the Crawford Path and Appalachian Trail, with Mount Washington 5.4 miles away and Lakes of the Clouds 3.9 miles away.
The sign put Mount Washington 5.4 miles away. What it did not say was how difficult each of those miles would be.

· Presidential Traverse

A hiker with a backpack climbs a rocky trail through a dense, sunlit forest of tall trees.
Between Mizpah Spring Hut and Mount Pierce, the trail passed through a forest straight out of a fairy tale.

· Presidential Traverse