“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” – John Muir
Tag: Travel (page 3 of 4)
“In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. … Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.” – Theodore Roosevelt
Also known as that time I took my in-laws to a nudist colony.
Ryan is obsessed with the Eastern Sierras. He’s been a couple of times on fishing/camping trips with his buddies, and he raves about it every time he returns. So when Ryan’s parents were coming to join us on our adventure for a couple of weeks, he really wanted to take them to the Eastern Sierras for part of the trip. We drove our little caravan of campers up from Joshua Tree to the Eastern Sierras, which is an area of central California that falls on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains, close to Yosemite and Sequoia National Park but on the other side of the range. It is a beautiful, remote part of the state where the mountains fall straight down into a beautiful open valley. It’s difficult to get to, which is why it remains relatively unspoiled and off the beaten path – perfect for us!
Excellent question. If you’ve decided to take some time off from work to do something different for a bit, how do you begin to decide what to do? For us it was a long time of what ifs and how abouts and that sounds interestings. One hears from time to time about those people who just quit their jobs, sell their belongings, and travel the world. Actually one often reads about them in a magazine or newspaper or blog. I certainly have – in fact I usually print those stories out and put them on my desk amidst the stacks and stacks and stacks of papers, intending to read up on these fascinating people if only I could find the time.
And then about a year ago, I said to Ryan – no, really, why not?! And that started a semi-serious conversation about whether we could actually take some time off.
Better late than never, we have closed out the first month of the trip! Keeping track of a few key statistics each month, here is where we ended up as of March 31st:
Miles Driven: 2,702 miles
In addition to chronicling our adventures, I thought I’d make this blog a bit useful as well. And so this begins a series of campsite reviews for the places that we are camping. We’ll start with Black Rock Canyon Campgrounds, in Joshua Tree National Park, California.
Of course for a review to be useful, it’s got to be conducted along some sort of metric, it needs to be accompanied by photos and it needs to be personal. I’ll only review campsites that we stayed in for 2 days or more, so that in fairness we stayed long enough to get a general sense of the place.
Not to be outdone in funky-ness or prickly-ness by the Joshua Trees, the Cholla Cholla Cacti are really something to see in Joshua Tree National Park. We stopped by the Cholla Cholla Cactus Garden on our drive to the south of the Park and I have to say that it is one of the strangest places that I’ve ever been. All of a sudden there is a huge collection of these relatively short, skinny, spiky cacti – they are few and far between anywhere else in the Park so far as I can tell, but they grow in abundance in this one spot. Again – this is one bizarre national park! This cactus garden is another favorite spot of mine here in Joshua Tree.
Well we have certainly gotten off to a slow start on this trip! And that’s just fine by me. One of my goals for this adventure is to slow down and take my time and enjoy the present without worrying about what the future holds – whether that’s two days into the future or two years into the future. And so after a couple of days in Big Sur, we headed south to San Diego, where some of our favorite friends live. We dropped the camper in front of their home in Cardiff, headed for a late night dinner at Pizza Port in Solana Beach, and the next day we were off to Florida for a few days. Our nephew was being baptized, and conveniently we are temporarily retired and so we have all the time in the world to head back to the East Coast for such a momentous life event as a baptism! Ryan and I have always said that no matter where in the world we live, we will make it a point to not miss the important family events, and that includes the time that we are on this road trip.
Ah, sunny Florida
Home Sweet Home
Well it’s official, we are off on the grand adventure. On Tuesday, we moved out of our apartment, took the final boxes and Ryan’s road bike to the storage unit, said farewell to a few friends who wanted to send us off, and we drove out of San Francisco. Not before stopping at Comcast to return our modem of course. No matter how romantic I’d like to make this trip, there are the practicalities of life to deal with. Like dropping off the modem.
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me – Walt Whitman
We are going on a road trip. For six months. We’ve taken leave from work, given our landlord notice and done our best to purge all of our extra belongings. And so begins an expedition of sorts, an odyssey to explore the West, see where an unstructured life will take us, and give ourselves time to exhale and relax and just be. Here’s why.
Why Not?! It seems like a no brainer – if you find yourself with the opportunity to take a sabbatical and put some wanderlusting into action, why on Earth wouldn’t you? Well, yes. But it’s so much easier dreamt than done. We, like most of you, have for years heard about those people who have cast aside their responsibilities, sold their belongings and quit their jobs and traveled the world. And we always thought wow, I wish we could do that. How lucky those people must be. And then it hit me about a year ago. Why not? For better or worse, I have always been someone who thought: if he can do it, I can do it. And so we started to really think about it and to think about what we would want to do with some time off.