Archive for Travel / lifestyle musings
February 27, 2008 at 9:19 pm · Filed under Home base, Travel / lifestyle musings
For most people, including us, it is a challenge to revise your earth-bound thinking to the world of full-time travel. There are so many presumptions that you have to toss out: the presumption of never-changing utilities (power, water, sewer, trash); the expectation that you’ll wake up every day and know where you are; the reliability of a weekly schedule.
But the process of tossing out those presumptions is very liberating, once you get the hang of it. As a full-time traveler without a house to maintain, you can focus on yourself rather than the structure around you. No tax bill, no mortgage, sure — but what about never having to sweep the front walk or paint the eaves?
We found that once on the road we had massive amounts of free time that had formerly been dedicated to mowing, shoveling snow, shopping for house items, caring for plants, and cleaning. I knew that would happen, but still it was amazing just how much time we spent servicing the house — literally 10 to 20 hours each week. It was a second job. And by selling the house and taking to the road, we’d essentially said to traditional society, “Take this job and shove it.”
Ah, those were the days, but we are now on the flip side of that, having come back to a house and finding ourselves completely immersed again in household duties. Suddenly it seems there is no time to do anything but take care of the next house-related task.
And my thinking has gone back to the mode of years ago when we last owned a house. Some of it is pretty bizarre. Case in point: I love my toilets. Yes, love. We finally found a low-flow toilet that actually works reliably (the Toto Ultramax). It works so well that I am even telling you about it, here, in public. It works so well that you could flush a live cat down it. (Note: I am cat lover as well as a toilet lover and don’t actually condone the practice of flushing cats.) As one of our contractors has said, “It makes you want to eat more just to see what it can take.”
OK, enough of that. My point is simply that homeowner-hood has taken over my brain and suddenly things like this not only matter, they are the top thoughts in my head. I am having actual concern about trivialities like leaves that blow into the carport, and decades-old cracks in the backyard wall. I am picking palm tree seeds from the gravel, and washing bird droppings off the windows. My number one goal this week is to — gasp — go shopping, for stuff like mattresses and chairs. What has happened? Did someone slip a double Prozac dose into my raisin bran?
In all this, there is no room for thoughts of adventure. I remember (vaguely) a time when we would awaken to draw back the bedroom curtains and be reminded of where we were that day. Then we’d grab the national park map and guide and plan a day of hiking, or sightseeing. Or we’d go walking around to explore a rally, or just open the windows and let the local smell (salt air, green forest, desert breeze) permeate the Airstream. I’d still have to do some work every day, but other than that my thoughts were of what we could do next to have fun or expand our horizons. Rarely did I think about cleaning or maintenance, and never about mowing, planting, or painting.
Well, in Tucson mowing is still low on the priority list, fortunately. So it’s not a total setback. But I am plagued by an emotion borne of homeownership: envy. I am horribly envious of my friends who are all in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park having fun. Other friends are getting together in Quartzsite this weekend. Worst of all, several of them have made piteous comments designed to make me feel better, like “Yep, I’ve been landlocked by my house too,” and “Don’t worry, someday you’ll get back on the road.” I want to be on the road now! If I sit here too much longer I may turn permanently green, and I don’t mean in the eco-friendly way.
I am ticking off the tasks that have to be completed before we can go. This weekend we are expecting Handy Jerry to come by and deal with some “punch list” items on the house. More interestingly, we will get delivery of our couch. (That might not seem like a big deal but it is to people who have spent a lot of time cross-legged on the rug lately.) And Emma has her big karate test on Saturday. This is all good, but it means yet another weekend stuck at home.
These tasks are passing by like a line of traffic on the highway. We’d like to get our chance to pull out, but they are so evenly spaced that we never seem to get a break. As soon as we see a break of four days or more in the schedule, we are going to hitch up and go somewhere — anywhere. And if we can’t see a break, we’ll make one. We’ll just schedule all the final tasks for the last two weeks of the month and take off between now and then. It’s risky, but worth a shot. That should get us out of homeowner-think and into mobile-think again — not to mention enlivening this blog a bit.
So let’s summarize:
- Homeownership can turn you green.
- In my world, the “homeless” wanderers are to be envied, and the stable home owners are to be pitied. (Yes, I live in opposite-land.)
- The best thing about Tucson is that lawns are optional.
- Toto makes a really great toilet.
Keep all that in mind. There will be a test later.
February 26, 2008 at 11:23 pm · Filed under Home base, Travel / lifestyle musings
At the moment our life feels like an endless stay at the airport. We’re awaiting a flight out but it never comes.
This weekend I was mentally rejuvenated by going to Las Vegas and hanging out with good friends. I came back to Tucson with a new perspective, and feeling ready to get the house project done. It’s a good thing too, because the news has gotten worse and worse, and without a break I might really be depressed about it.
The story behind this is too tedious to detail. Suffice to say that our countertops will not be installed until late in March, which means we won’t have appliances or sinks until nearly April. We have a choice: we can blow off the house and leave it unfinished, to be resolved this fall, or we can blow off our schedule and stay here until the house is at least habitable.
We’ve decided to stay, sort of. This means a major disruption to the schedule that I had posted about a week ago. The worst thing is that we will miss the Heart of Texas unit rally in Ft Davis entirely. We’ll also have to shove our scheduled stops in Weatherford, New Orleans, and Florida back about three weeks, and cut some other stops out entirely. Nobody is happy about this.
But there’s no point in agonizing about it. If we left things unfinished here we’d only be coming back to a project in October or November, and we don’t want to face that again. We want to come back to a house we can enjoy, not a project that drains our energy. The whole point of having a house was to have a comfortable and relaxing place to land between trips. The only way it can fill that role will be if we get it to a point where we can settle in when we return.
This is not all bad news. Since we have little to do in the house during March, except wait, we will look for an opportunity to take a shorter trip for a week or so between projects. This means we can re-visit the idea of going to Sonora with some friends who have expressed interest (and who happen to have spouses who are native Spanish speakers). We can also do some long weekends in southern Arizona at places that weren’t available to us during the coldest part of winter, like the Chiricahua Mountains.
I wish we could take off this week and join our friends at Anza-Borrego. As it turns out, several of our friends are coincidentally going to be there this week, including several characters you know if you’ve been reading this blog regularly: Bobby & Danine; Bill & Larry; Rich C and Sadira; and Jay and Cherie from Cheyenne. It sounds like a party — and we can’t go!
One happy reason that we can’t go has to do with Emma. She has made such tremendous progress at karate that she has achieved three stripes on her white belt. Her instructors have decided that this Saturday she will test for her yellow belt, which is a real compliment. Normally it takes at least three more weeks for a kid of her age to be ready for that test. To be ready, she has to learn some more phrases in Korean, study some rules, and learn one more new form. So this is a critical week for her.
The moral of the story is that delays happen, in any kind of traveling life. Long ago we learned to stay flexible. It will be a huge drag to miss our friends at the Fort Davis rally, but every setback opens up a new opportunity. It’s sort of fun not knowing exactly where or when we will be going, but having confidence that something interesting is about to happen. One way or another, we are going to get this Airstream back on the road. And we’ll find our friends again at some point. Like us, they are irrepressible travelers and they will pop up, sooner or later.
Once we get a few details squared away, I’ll post a new schedule here. Right now only know that we will be back in Vermont by June, and attending the Vintage Trailer Jam in Saratoga Springs NY during July 10-14. The rest is unknown … and as long as it is, I’ll enjoy the sensation of anticipation and the thrill of all the possibilities that lie ahead. Perhaps this “delay” thing isn’t going to be so bad after all.
February 22, 2008 at 9:00 am · Filed under Travel / lifestyle musings
Business took me to The Strip yesterday. It seems to change every time I see it, no matter how often I am there. My last visit to The Strip was only two months ago, yet the pace of endless demolition and re-construction means that there are always changes. From the upper floors of The Venetian hotel the view was pretty good, even with a cloud of yellow haze on the horizon that obscured the mountains.
Las Vegas almost defies definition. It is a circle of suburbs surrounding a sprawling city, which in turns surrounds a strange little bizarro world called The Strip. When I try to explain it to people, I can’t grab a hold of it in any single sentence. Just the mammoth scale of the hotels is almost unbelievable. Most of the largest hotels in the world are here, with over 4000 rooms each. The billions of dollars being exchanged in the casinos are another incredible thing, and it is all characterized by the ostentatious decor, fabulous signs, and incredible excess in all things.
When I’m in town on business I try to put mental blinders on and focus on what I’m doing rather than the scenery of The Strip, lest it overwhelm me. But little things pricked my consciousness all day like tiny mosquitoes. For example, the parking garage at The Venetian is 13 stories tall. I’ve never parked my car on the 12th story of a building before.
It’s also virtually impossible to go in a straight line anywhere near The Strip. Each hotel has worked out ingenious barriers and alignments that direct you inevitably into the casino. A simple walk down Las Vegas Boulevard isn’t so simple now, and hasn’t been for two decades. I find it an intriguing challenge to work out the most direct routes between points A and B, but the quest to find those routes results in many blind alleys and missed turns. I got lost somewhere behind the new Wynn hotel, trying to find the Convention Center, and had to call Brian for directions.
You’ve got to love a street named for Frank Sinatra, or Debbie Reynolds, even if it is a rather grungy line of asphalt crowded with traffic. I think Las Vegas has hit on something there. Perhaps if we renamed a few of the less attractive streets in other cities after exalted stars from the entertainment world, we’d like them better. “Main Street”? It could be much more fun if called “Liberace Way.”
On Wednesday night we played the first poker home game. Brian and Leigh are teaching me the fundamentals of tournament-style poker. There will be more home games this weekend too. It is very interesting viewing poker through their eyes. They see it not as an emotional battle, as it is often portrayed in movies, but as a series of calculated decisions. The decision process is extremely complicated, involving card odds, format (cash or tournament), player experience, number of players, betting values and patterns, “tells,” and many other factors. Logic rules their play, and as a result they are very good.
I find the process interesting. It’s something like negotiation. You need to size up the opponent and the situation, then estimate your chance of winning in advance, and bet accordingly. If circumstances change, you need to respond quickly. For this reason, I am studying the skills and trying to see how they might fit into my business world. So it seems Las Vegas still has a few things to teach me.
February 4, 2008 at 10:27 pm · Filed under Home base, Travel / lifestyle musings
Last night when most people were watching the Super Bowl we were over having our first family dinner with local Tucsonians. Judy has been watching this blog for some time, ever since I wrote a rant about how New Urbanism and RV’ing don’t seem to mix too well. She and her husband Rick live in a New Urbanist-type community called Civano, which we seriously considered moving into before we bought our current house.
Judy and I have stayed in touch via email, and now that we are finally back in town, she invited us over for lasagna dinner with the family. It turns out we have a tremendous amount in common: they have homeschooled their kids (very successfully, I might add) and we share a lot of ideals about homes, travel, and lifestyle. I was also very impressed with their cozy straw-bale house, which is beautiful and exactly what we would have like to have bought if we could have found it for sale. (They built it themselves.)
The really significant thing about this dinner, for me, was that it represents the beginning of us finally making new friends in the local area. It was almost a weird sensation for me to recognize that — unlike virtually everyone else we’ve befriended in the past couple of years — they don’t own an Airstream. They’ve never seen my magazine, and thus the basis for our friendship is different from all the other people we’ve met lately.
Meeting people as a result of traveling in the Airstream has been very easy. The aluminum brotherhood seems to give us an instant camaraderie, which we’ve enjoyed. But without the Airstream to make our introductions, we have to make friends the old-fashioned way.
It’s a little harder. People in the RV world are used to becoming very friendly very quickly. You don’t have much time to sniff around when your new friend might pull out of the neighborhood in less than 24 hours. RV travelers seem to instinctively know this, and so they get right to the business of socializing as if you’ve been old friends for decades.
But in the “real world”, people take their time. You might meet at the gym, the library or karate class several times and casually chat before someone breaks the ice. Inviting someone over for dinner within 10 minutes of meeting them for the first time would seem “overly friendly” or even inappropriate in those settings, yet in campgrounds it happens all the time.
There’s something inherently friendly about the impromptu communities formed by groups of travel trailers. It doesn’t matter if we are in a high-end “RV resort”, a state park, or just boondocking in some lonely place. People just come up and talk and tell their stories as freely as can be. We’re so accustomed to it that it feels unfriendly when we see strangers walking by our house and they don’t stop in to chat — even though in polite suburban society that would be considered intrusive.
I think that’s why I had been looking forward to meeting Rick & Judy. It was clear from our email conversation that they “got” it, and so we enjoyed a fast warm-up and a fun family dinner. And having our Airstream friends dropping by has been nice too. Brett was here, Bruno & Leila were here, Jim was supposed to come (but he decided to stay in Quartzsite), Bobby & Danine are coming, and pretty soon we’ll see Dr. C too. All of those people know how to behave in “RV society”: you just swing the door wide and treat everyone like family even if you just met them half an hour ago.
But we can’t expect that of everyone. Don’t get me wrong — our neighbors have been wonderful and we like them all. We now count Judy and Rick among our friends, which is a really neat thing for us. But I think we may have come here expecting the City of Tucson to be one big happy campground, and we have to remember that most other people live by the traditional rules of the city. We’ll have to make an extra effort to be friendly and patient to make long-lasting friendships, until we get back on the road where the emotional juices flow a little more easily.
Uke song of the day: “Tonight You Belong To Me” by Billy Rose and Lee David. Popularized in the movie, “The Jerk.” See it performed by Janet Klein (for key of D tuning) or get the chords for typical key of C tuning here.
February 3, 2008 at 10:30 pm · Filed under Travel / lifestyle musings
I received a very nice note from a blog reader a couple of days ago:
Dear Rich and Eleanor,
Two years ago my husband said to me, “I’m going to make “Tour of America” our home page” on our new iMac computer”…and for two years your website, with all of your wonderful pictures and stories, has entered our home each day. Over the course of these past two years I have thought many, many times about writing to you because I have lived the life that you are providing for your daughter and I
just want to tell you that it is a WONDERFUL life, but I know that you already know that!
In 1970, when I was ten and my brother was six my mother and father bought a brand new 1970 Overlander in Jackson Center, Ohio. My parents decision to buy that Airstream was not only the beginning of the most incredible family adventure, but the beginning of a bond that would bring us together time and time again after we grew up. My mother and father were both art teachers and we traveled in that Airstream every summer for three months at a time until my brother and I went away to college. We went across the country eighteen times and my brother and I had a childhood that was so rich that we have spent most of our own lives trying to recreate similar experiences for our own families.
Today, my parents still have our old 1970 Airstream. My mom and dad have kept her up meticulously constantly updating her through the years. My brother, his wife, and his three children have their own Airstream, a 1972 Land Yacht, that they have completely rebuilt over the years. My husband, my two children, and I have a 1964 that we have restored and continue to work on. We vacation at least once or twice a year all together with our three Airstreams…our own little caravan!
Yet, the one thing that haunts me the most is, how do I provide an experience that I was so fortunate to have, for my own children? Sure, we have taken that week long or two week long road trip with our airstream and had a wonderful time, but I’m talking about that sense of time, of wandering across the US, rockhounding at Topaz Mountain, being invited to a Hopi Snake Dance, watching eskimos dry fish in Kotzebue, flying in a bush plane, walking under a bald eagles nest, canoeing in Prince William Sound, bicycling the Hawaiian islands, or driving around at dusk looking for wildlife. These are just a few of the things that I remember.
I have spoken many times with the now-grown children of Airstreaming families. Always they rave about the experience and tell me how formative it was. Universally they wish to give their children the same experience. Hearing these stories has helped us know that what we are doing for Emma is good for her as well as us. It also reminds me that we have not completed the experience. There’s much more to learn, and see, and do.
I’m also very warmed (on this blustery cool Tucson day) by the knowledge that the blog has enriched the lives of thousands of people. I know there are many who read it daily but never write in, and that’s OK, but when I do hear from someone who has been reading the blog for a while I really appreciate it. It makes the effort of writing every day really worthwhile.
That’s why I published this letter tonight. This blog is not just about the travel experience we are having, but the enjoyment of being able to share it all with you. Thanks to everyone who reads this.
February 2, 2008 at 10:52 pm · Filed under Home base, Travel / lifestyle musings
If we don’t need it, we don’t buy it. That has been our motto for the past two years. Living in a confined space means you don’t buy “stuff” just because:
- it’s a bargain
- it would look nice on a shelf
- it’s pretty
- we might use it someday
- it’s handcrafted (or variations like, “It’s Native American made!”)
- we want a souvenir of our visit *
- we can stock up and save
- somebody said we had to get one of these
- we collect _______ (fill in the blank) **
… even though these are all truly American reasons to buy, in normal circumstances. I know, in America it’s not what you spent, it how much you “saved” by buying it. But in an Airstream it’s not what you saved that matters, but where the heck you’re going to put it! For this reason, we try to focus our purchases on consumables and necessary equipment.
* We do get very small souvenirs. Eleanor buys pins at the national parks we visit and has bought a few tiny Indian drums about 3″ tall, and Emma earns Junior Ranger badges & patches. I don’t really get into souvenirs so mine are photos.
** Emma does have a rock collection but the rules are that no rock should be larger than 1″, only one sample of each type is allowed, and the collection periodically gets offloaded to save weight. Also, people are entranced by the cute little girl who collects rocks and so she gets a lot of them for free.
With this philosophy we have not only saved money but a lot of dusting of artifacts. But now of course we own a house and it echoes with emptiness. It is just begging for a whole bunch of “stuff” to decorate the halls, fill the shelves, and line the walkways.
A friend suggested that we make it a “zen house”, with very little in it. That way those few items we have will carry special meaning. “Keep it minimalist,” he suggested, and Eleanor agreed. We still remember the pain of getting rid of all the stuff we had in the last house. It took two summers, and we ended up giving away most of the stuff because — shockingly — nobody really saw any value in the various artifacts we collected, including us. It was really frustrating to open the boxes in our storage unit and find heaps of things that we paid good money for, and yet which we no longer valued. After a while all I could see in box after box was piles of greenbacks being tossed out. So we committed that we wouldn’t do it again.
But hey, we didn’t have anything to do today, so we thought “Why not drop by the Tanque Verde Swap Meet, and then the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show?” That’s a little like an alcoholic dropping by the corner bar just to see what’s going on with his old friends.
Fortunately, we met temptation and won, mostly. To our eyes, the Swap Meet was just a giant flea market filled with junk. It has been running in Tucson for thirty years, but in all that time they haven’t seemed to be able to conjure up anything other than the same stuff all the other flea markets have. Except for the product above: a box of breasts. They’re called Mimi Balls. (Who is Mimi?)
In the interest of journalistic integrity I squeezed one, as the box suggests, and despite the claim on the box (“breast ball with I Love You Sound”), it was silent. It also felt about as real as a porn starlet (only a supposition since I have never personally squeezed a porn starlet). Still, it could be an amusing gift in the right circumstances and I seriously considered buying a pair for my friend Dr. C.
Two other salient points: (1) Eleanor refused to pose with them for this blog — can you believe that? (2) The box says they’re for “Age 5 and up”.
I am grateful that the Tanque Verde Swap Meet had so little of interest to us, but Eleanor says it is really that our perspective on things has changed so much that we can’t bring ourselves to buy stuff that we’d like but really don’t need. We are well trained now.
So, wallet intact, the next stop was one of the 50+ venues of the giant Tucson Gem & Mineral Show. It runs from today through Feb 17. Our favorite stop is Tucson Electric Park, where there are enough displays and vendors to keep you busy all day. Emma spends much of her time looking down at the ground for bits & pieces of rocks to collect for free, and Eleanor hunts for beads. There were a lot of both.
We got out of Electric Park after about four hours without violating our guidelines. Emma bought a pair of little fossils of a leaf in sandstone for $3 (fossils are part of her rock collection), and Eleanor bought some beads, which she uses to make jewelry for friends. However, I got sucked in by a vendor who had a very nice collection of Roman coins. I’ve always wanted one for the same reason that I like meteorites: they are inspiring. Think about where this silver coin has been in the last 2,000 years!
The coin I bought depicts Emperor Gallienus and was struck in silver between 258 and 260 AD. On the face it shows Gallienus wearing his crown and on the reverse it shows him on the right receiving a globe from Jupiter, which symbolizes the gods’ approval of the Emperor dominating the world. It’s in good enough condition to clearly see the beard on Gallienus’ face, which just fascinates me.
Did I need a coin nearly two millennia old? This question plagued me while I was looking at them. The coin has no value to me as jewelry, and it has no useful purpose at all. Yet, here it is on my desk, with Gallienus looking up at me from history.
I will keep it in the safe place I keep my unwearable Hamilton Ventura watch, in the hopes that both items will appreciate in value and perhaps contribute in a small way to retirement. At least it is small and has some intrinsic value, whereas the Mimi Ball is just a fake boob.
Even with that justification in mind, it spooks me to think we could so easily get back on the path of collecting stuff we don’t need. Being back in a house, with less to occupy our time, we feel like dieters at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Buying stuff we don’t need is a habit we’ve all learned just as a result of being part of this society. We spent two years un-learning that habit, and now we’ve got to stay on the wagon.
It would be a failure if we came back to the house in the fall and found it full of things that we didn’t remember buying. If we are careful, we can keep our priorities on what matters: enjoying life, educating Emma, sharing with friends & family — all things that don’t cost much. As they say, the best things in life aren’t things. But sticking to lofty ideals such as that one is harder than it might seem.
January 18, 2008 at 5:51 pm · Filed under Travel / lifestyle musings
When does life become perfect?
It is part of human nature to strive for more. Once our basic needs are satisfied, we look for improvements. Few of us are permanently satisfied with what we have, a trait that is well exploited by marketers who offer bigger houses, quieter dishwashers, and tastier frozen pizzas.
I have long been one of those who is always looking around the next corner for something else, which motivates both travel and entrepreneurial business ventures. This has cost me quite a lot of money in mistakes and lost salary. I would probably be financially better off if I had stuck to my last nine-to-five job, but long ago I conceded that I am unable to sit still and leave “well enough” alone.
But now I sense an internal settling occurring, and having a house to live in (at least once it is finished) seems to be bringing those feelings to the surface for analysis. I am not sure if this is symptomatic of aging. Perhaps internal hormones that first manifested at age 13 are finally settling down; perhaps this is part of the fact that I am now into my mid-40s (I can’t believe I even typed that, it feels entirely like I am speaking of someone else). I am, as a teacher once said to me, on that “long slow slide” that begins sometime after the late 30s.
It is disheartening when viewed as a phenomenon of physical deterioration (knees weakening, brain not as sharp as it once was) and yet there are small benefits. As the joke goes, having Alzheimer’s means you can forget all your troubles. In my case, I am finding the prickly edges of my personality wearing down. I’m worrying less and looking at things differently. Being 40-something means you can sometimes get respect from the Gen X 30-somethings who work for you, and not be looked down on too badly by the “silver fox” capitalists who own everything. It’s a good middle position to work from, like being a Junior in high school.
There is no doubt that our travels have helped along my gradual transformation. Two years in an travel trailer ought to be required of all citizens of this country, like military service in other countries. Not only would it be good for the environment, since full-time RV’ers consume only a fraction of the resources of stationary folks, but it would give more people the opportunity to broaden their views and appreciate how much they don’t need. As a country our values might shift for the better.
I feel like I’m at a turning point. It’s the culmination of a long process that began sixteen years ago when Eleanor and I bought our first house together, a gigantic money pit Victorian house in Massachusetts. With a huge mortgage payment and an impossible list of essential repairs staring at me, I quit my day job two months later and started my own company, the same company that publishes Airstream Life magazine today. It was a huge, seemingly insane first step down the road that has led me here.
I remember sitting in my first home office, an 8×9 room furnished with a simple desk and a view to the street through two permanently fogged windows, and listening to a Holly Cole covering “I Can See Clearly Now”. On the Internet, I had found a simple A-frame house for sale, atop a hill near Austin TX in a place where you could see the stars through clear skies, and the views were panoramic from the front and rear decks. I used to look at the pictures of that house and listen to that song and think, “Someday…”
My internal clock is telling me that today is “someday”. We ended up in the desert rather than the hill country, and we have a daughter who wasn’t part of the program back in 1993, and I’m certainly not wealthy, but overall the process worked. Eleanor and I have gained experience, matured a little, won and lost a few battles. I feel like we’ve achieved a sense of who we are and what makes us feel right. Life is not perfect but after decades of tromping around looking for perfect it has become obvious that this may be as good as it gets.
Travel-wise the tables have been turned on me lately. I spoke to Bert Gildart today; he and Janie are in Needles CA heading for Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and they asked if we could join them. In six hours we could be there in the Airstream, but we need to stay here for a while. Not only do we have house stuff to do, but a round-trip to Anza-Borrego would cost about $200 in fuel. As full-timers we didn’t look at trips that way since we rarely made round-trips, but now suddenly we are the house-bound folks with obligations on our time. Ouch.
I shall comfort myself with the knowledge of travel yet to come. In February I will be going to Las Vegas for a few days, and I hope to work up a trip to Sonora as well. We have several visitors coming, which may inspire at least a weekend or two nearby, too.
« Previous entries ·
Next entries »
