The first time I stood at Tunnel View, Yosemite brought me to tears. Again, on the valley floor, I cried in gratitude, craning my neck to look at the wild and dramatic waterfalls and the immortal, towering El Capitan. Never have I felt so small and insignificant and fleeting and been so joyful to feel… Read More Yosemite
After Pinnacles we headed to Salinas, where we had agreed to house sit for a week. Actually, we had agreed to house sit AND cat sit, but sadly the elderly cat decided the week before to stop eating. Her mom brought her to the vet who told her it was time to say goodbye. The… Read More A Summary of Salinas
We did not originally have Pinnacles on our bingo card for this year of nomading. But when the circumstances of our stay in Salinas changed (see the Salinas post for those details) we pivoted. We camped at a super interesting and beautiful ranch within striking range of the park. We woke at 6am and drove… Read More Pinnacles National Park side quest
We’ve reached the portion of our programming where we took diverging paths for a week. We checked out of the Palm Springs condo and parked downtown for a few hours so that Larry could finish his work week. I almost got to see a friend from Alaska whom I haven’t seen in person in 15… Read More We interrupt the nomading for some side quests
Palm Springs lives up to the hype. As an east coast person, I had only really learned about the famous Palm Springs through TV and movies. Glamorous, wealthy, fabulous. Perfect weather. Perfect tans. Perfect teeth. Everywhere perfect. That can’t be real. Surely. Nope. It’s real. Palm Springs is all that. Sure, it has some flaws… Read More Twelve days in a desert paradise
It was a hard choice, but we opted to leave our Palm Springs lodging to take a weekend in Joshua Tree National Park. This park was absolutely worth the trip over. There was so much to see and so many great hikes through two distinct deserts, the Colorado Desert and the Mojave Desert. We saw… Read More Side quest to Joshua Tree
We continued our march across the country and chose to stay a week in Tuscon, Arizona, in a rental home that abuts the Saguaro National Park. In fact, to get to the home we needed to drive through a winding portion of the park itself before getting onto a rutted dirt road for the last… Read More A week in Tucson and a night in Yuma
No one accidentally ends up at Big Bend, despite it being so large it sounds impossible to miss. At over 800,000 acres (1200 square miles) on the Texas/Mexico Border, you would think it would be readily accessible from all directions, but the vastness of our country is shockingly apparent when you realize how long and… Read More A weekend in Big Bend National Park
Our first week-long stop was Austin, Texas. We arrived after an overnight in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, on a Sunday, and we are now departing on Friday. We managed to squeeze a lot into our short time here. We got to catch up with friends from Salem and friends from Virginia. We got to eat excellent… Read More Austin deserves more
I’ve not been great at keeping the socials current with our activities. But just because we are stationary at home for a few months, doesn’t mean we haven’t been exploring. We’ve been trying to enjoy our home state as much as possible this winter. And anytime we can combine Louie with playing tourist I am… Read More Florida Explorations
Empty Nest Wanderings 