On the Road Again Again

After an eventful and many-miled 2 and half months, I’m figuring that our blog is in need of an update. Last we wrote, we were in sunny Taos. During our time there Rodney worked on journal articles and job-hunting, and I had a great opportunity to freelance for the Visitor’s Guide that is put out by the Taos News. It was really fun to have an excuse to drive all over the area and research the history.

The week of Thanksgiving, our time in Taos came to a close, and we headed to Colorado to meet up with my family for the holiday. We had a great time with them in Colorado Springs just hanging out, going to the zoo (which is an awesome zoo by the way), and of course, doing a lot of eating.

December 1st, we headed to Missouri to visit with Rodney’s family. We had an early Christmas there and just had a great time relaxing. Our activities ranged from dragging a dear out of the woods to me learning to embroider to riding around in the back of a pickup truck in the cow pasture so that I could get some up-close cow photos. Our time also included my first trip to Branson and an 2 and ½ mile drive through a light display.

After 2 weeks that just flew by, we hit the road again to head toward my family in Pennsylvania by way of a few other states. We stopped in Alabama to see my grandmother, and it was so nice to be able to spend time with her and my aunt, uncle and cousins there. I was excited to show Rodney my grandfather’s shop that I logged many hours in as a child, and we even had a chance to breeze through the Space Center.

We left Huntsville and headed North to South Carolina to visit Rodney’s sister in Greenville. Her little guy, however, had a fever, so we made a slight re-route and hit Charlotte first to see my grandparents while we gave his fever time to exit the scene. We got to see both of my new little second cousins and had a nice time catching up with family there. After a day, we headed back South to Greenville, where we had two days visiting with Rodney’s sister and family, and I got to touch base with my dear friend michele. We had a great time getting to see the new downtown in Greenville (which is lovely), and then chatting, playing, and eating amazing steak.

With our Southern Sweep completed, we again headed North to PA to see my family. While there, we celebrated Christmas. We also had a lot of time to just hang out, play, talk, and eat and visit with friends. Our time there included giving Rodney a tour through the town the I grew up in (that is about an hour away from where my family lives now), me taking yarn spinning classes with my mother, helping my little brother select songs for the album the he is now in Nashville recording, and a blitz-tour of New York City (Rodney’s first time in the city). It was a whirlwind tour of seeing friends and family, and we had a great time connecting and re-connecting with everyone.

About 2 and a half weeks after arriving in PA, we headed out for Missouri again. This holiday season was the ultimate in going back and forth between families, and ours are about 16 hours apart! We were blessed to be able to spend almost a month with each of our families.

Our second pass through Missouri was nice. We spent a little more time exploring the area, and Rodney took me out to his great-grandmother’s house, where I got to hear a lot of the history there. We also spent quite a bit of time cooking, and I was able to mess around long enough to figure out how to make caramel buttercream meringue icing (that we had had in NYC). What a victory when those egg whites do what they are supposed to do! I also had some time to re-discover my love of knitting and much of my week was spent knitting for a local craft show and then for friends. Rodney and his dad spent a lot time walking, and his mother and I spent a lot of time talking. Funny how that works. ☺

But with all this visiting behind us, the current questions seem to be “where are you now,” and “what are you doing”? Well, right now I am at my old haunt, the Brewing Market in Boulder. We just drove in this morning. Rodney has a temporary project to work on here, so we are getting to hang next to the Flatirons for a few weeks. I’m super excited to be living up at Chautauqua (right next to the mountains where I lived the year we dated), and we are looking forward to getting to see friends. We are still job hunting and hopefully interviewing, and we honestly do not know where we are going to end up. But the ride has been amazingly fun so far, and I can’t wait to see where it goes next.

We will update again, hopefully sooner than last time. Keep checking to see where we end up next month, but for now, the “on the road” thing seems to be where we are, and our road is driving past the lovely town of Boulder. I can’t complain. The sky is blue, the mountains are right there, and I have a place to sleep.

Exploring NM

We've been in New Mexico and have finally had a little while to get in a bit of a rhythm which has been nice. I am familiar with the local grocery shopping haunts and have been to more than one farmer's market multiple times. One local man has taken to teasing us about our consumption of squash, but what can I say, it's really good squash. :) We have also had a little bit of time to explore the area and take some hikes. Rodney has ventured up near Wheeler Peak (the highest peak in NM), and together we have spent some time on the West Rim trail, a trail that runs along the Rio Gorge that contains the Rio Grande River and is also adjacent to the Rio Gorge Bridge, which you might recognize from such movies as Terminator 4 and Wild Hogs.
I think the most exciting thing I have done, besides fully embracing cooking whole chickens on a weekly basis and discovering the wonders of rutabagas, turnips, and fresh beets, has been to get a visitor's library card. It has been so long since I have had a local library card, and I am still just tickled pink every time I go to the counter and they let me take books. I did this for most of my childhood, but it all seems new again. Especially since the books are not journals and don't require that I write a paper for them. ;)
I'm staying busy studying for my GRE. Tragically my old scores are more than five years old, and apparently an actual graduate degree is not a sufficient predictor for success in graduate school, so I'm hitting the books again and learning to embrace quadratic equations and word problems that include things like "n number of pears." Rodney is busy working on job stuff and research and is a pretty full-time math tutor as well. :)
We are loving the laid back culture here, and we are really enjoying getting to learn a lot more about the history in the Southwest. Adobe houses dot the landscape everywhere and their muted browns and reds and straight lines blend almost seamlessly into the land around them. Being from the East Coast originally and having an almost obsessive love of all things green, I even surprise myself when I realize how much I like it here. The valleys stretch on for miles covered in little brushy trees and brown dirt, but there is a simplicity to the landscape, and I think I love the calm nature of the land. The mountains are also beautiful, and I think pretty soon here we're going to be seeing snow, at least up there, if not in our own yard.
Well, off to more math problems and maybe a book...

"I see my path, but I don't know where it leads...

Not knowing where I'm going is what inspires me to travel it." --Rosalia de Castro

Our adventure is far from over. Yes, we have left Alaska behind us, and we have struck out for the lower 48, but we are not finished traveling. In fact, in one sense, after this trip, we may never be finished traveling.

Fall has certainly arrived, and we have had the amazing pleasure of watching it for the last month. Around September 20th, the weather started to change in Alaska, and it was apparent that winter was not far away. With the ultimate reluctance, we decided that camping in truly cold weather was soon going to become a reality and campsites were beginning to close, so we had no choice but to buy a house in Alaska or head south. There was still so much left to explore and so much ground we had not covered, but we had hit all the highlights that we had planned on and were woefully without Alaskan employment, so we made the decision to head back to the lower 48. I don't think the distance that we had covered to get to Alaska had really registered with either of us, so when planning our return we figured we could push through and be back quickly. Five days, a few chilly nights, one closed campground, a dead battery, and a terrible border crossing later, we were back in the US.
We got to spend a week exploring Washington and Oregon. What amazing places! Washington, home to Mount Rainier, is full of awesome forests and great views. We spent two days in the park and got to hike and relax after our long drive. I have to admit, however, that Oregon stole my heart, and I was about ready to just set up our tent on the sand next to the fantastic rocky beaches and never leave. It was beautiful and definitely one of the places that I plan to return to.
This part of our trip also included some great visits with great friends. I was able to introduce Rodney to friends of mine from college that I had not seen in 9 years. They have 3 adorable children, and we had a wonderful time telling stories and catching up. I also got to meet a good friend of Rodney's from Boulder. He is married with an also adorable 14 month old. He showed us all around the Young Life camp where they live and work, and we even got to have dinner with them at a local establishment in the closest little town, Antelope. It was really wonderful to get to see old friends and make new ones. :)
I'm sure you all are wondering what we have planned now that we are no longer heading north and are not in the great state of Alaska. Well, when we were in Alaska, we learned a little secret. Many Alaskans spend their winters in New Mexico. So, in order to get the full Alaskan experience, we headed south, and we are spending some time in New Mexico where there promises to be great hiking, wonderful farmer's markets, and really interesting people. We are hoping to spend these next couple of months working on projects and preparing for the next stage of our life. We have turned in our trusty tent for now, and I am loving having a kitchen but already missing being outside. We plan to update this blog with our adventures here, so feel free to check back.
Here's to unknown paths, new vistas, unanticipated adventures, and the possibilities in all of our lives. If I am learning anything, it is that so much in life is possible...that too inspires me to head down the road.

On the road again...

Hi all...the last two weeks have been a whirlwind of chilly nights and very long dirt roads, but we had a great time. After leaving Denali, we decided to head North toward the Arctic Circle. Our original goal had been to head all the way up the state to Prudhoe Bay/Deadhorse (the site of the oil fields and the only driveable way to the Arctic Ocean), but with mixed reviews about the road, we were unsure about the long trek. The road is about 400 miles (much of which is dirt), and the brochures admonish you to carry two spare tires, water, flares, watch out for semis flying by, and be prepared to have a cracked windshield. Now while dirt roads are not exactly foreign to either of us, we were a little apprehensive about embarking on such a trek, so we decided to go partway (to the Arctic Circle) and turn around if it proved too difficult. Once we got partway up, however, we were encouraged by the rangers at the Arctic Interagency Center to head on up the road and be wowed by the scenery and animals. This, combined with our friend James telling us that the road is for true adventurers, was pretty much irresistible, so with one spare tire and visions of cracked windshields, we headed out. The drive included going over Alaska's highest pass, Atigun Pass, at 4,643 feet and also took us through the Brooks Range. Yeah...I was pretty excited about that. :) The views were phenomenal, and we even got to see the farthest Northern Spruce on the road as the terrain turned to vast treeless plains covered in ranging red tundra. The fall colors were amazing, and despite the chilly nights camping, we had a blast. The trip included seeing our first muskox, lots of caribou, and getting to touch the Arctic Ocean, so really, what more could you ask for? After reaching the ocean (which had to be accessed by a guided tour that is monitored by the oil company), we realized that it was all South from there. It was a pretty strange feeling after heading North for so long. But we were certainly not done with the Arctic region.
As we headed back south, we drove half of the road and then decided to stop and visit the only real town on the road, Wiseman. Wiseman is about 85 miles north of the Arctic Circle and is home to about 14 full-time residents. When we drove into town, someone suggested that we visit the chapel. We drove up to a very historic building with a chapel sign, and walked inside to find an adorable, quaint chapel that had a sign that beckoned you to stay and engage in prayer. We sat for awhile, and after some time a little elderly lady came up to the door to say hello. We began chatting and after a little while we were intrigued by this women and her ministry of the prayer chapel, so we decided to stay in the area. After a quick walk around the town, we came back to our car, and she invited us into her home for tea. We were able to stay the weekend, and woke up on our first anniversary in the little town of Wiseman, north of the Arctic Circle, and getting to attend church at a wonderful little prayer chapel surrounded by wonderful people! We could not have planned a better surprise if we had tried. What a blessing!

Sadly, we had to leave Wiseman and our new friends later that day and head back toward Fairbanks. The last major place on our list was Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, and we were running out of time to get down there. So, with about 28 hours of driving on the Dalton Highway behind us (and no flats or cracks), we headed for Wrangell-St. Elias, known for its glaciers and backcountry wilderness.
While we were excited to go, our spirits were slightly dampened when we learned that the way into the park was by a 66 mile dirt road that had been laid over a railroad track and was littered with railroad spikes. Let's just say that we drove slowly, scouring the road for anything that might land us on the side of the road. When we arrived, the weather was overcast, and the "campsite" was right near the glacier. When I say "campsite," insert "large gravel parking lot that they let you set a tent up in." Now there is something you should know about glaciers. They are God's form of air conditioning and unless it's hot, you don't want to camp next to one. All night a cool breeze blew through the tent airing out everything in its way. The view, however, was really phenomenal. We awoke the next morning, intent on heading into the town to see the glacier, only to find one of our tires quite low. Rodney filled it up (which I would have never known to do, but I have now been thoroughly educated in the way of tire sidewalls), and we headed out to find the only tire repair shop in town. The guy was putting a roof on somewhere across town, so we waited a few hours. Upon removing the tire, the culprit was determined to be "ye old drywall screw." Yeah...
Well, the next day we got to go into the town, and we were able to hike down to the glacier. It was amazing to walk around on it and get to see it all really up close. The trip was definitely worth it!

We left there, and headed down to Valdez (home of the infamous Exxon Valdez oil spill). Having driven the pipeline all the way to the top, I wanted to complete the entire length of it. In Valdez, we were treated to more glaciers, wonderful waterfalls, and a sea lion. The scenery there was unbelievable with mountains towering above you as you head toward the ocean. Really beautiful!
Now we're back in Anchorage. We're hoping to get a glacier cruise in before they end for the season, but we'll see....

Done Did Denali

Hi All...We are in Fairbanks and just wanted to write a quick update. We spent much of the last week in Denali National Park where we saw awesome animals, did some amazing hiking, met some interesting people, and wore almost all of our clothes to keep warm. The 6 hour bus ride (the only way to get into the park) took us 85 miles into the park where we camped at Wonder Lake. This campground is the closest that you can get to Mt. McKinley unless you are on the mountain. They say that only 30% of people who come to visit even get to see the whole mountain, and we were incredibly blessed. Despite our very cold and rainy bus ride in, we had two fantastic days of viewing the mountain. There is nothing quite like waking up, sticking your head out of the tent, and seeing a 20,000 foot mountain right in front of you (28 miles away). We were also able to do some great off-trail hiking. Denali is famous for not having many trails in the park, so you are able to just ride the bus and say, "I'd like to get off here please," and they let you just tromp around on the tundra. It is a funny feeling though, because these are the same buses that carry people into the park for the day to do wildlife viewing, so one minute you are scanning for bears and the next you are hopping out to climb every mountains. Surreal, but really wonderful. We were also very fortunate to hit the peak fall season here. Fortunate in that the colors were unbelievable. The camping was also quite an adventure. Because of the nature of the area, all the food is kept in a building surrounded by picnic tables and most people cook and eat there. This leads to getting to know the people around you much more than normal camping, and we had a great time getting to talk to lots of other visitors. Poor Rodney...some nights I think he had cooked, cleaned up, gotten ready for bed, and returned to the cook area only to find me still talking or helping out a new friend with a Scrabble game. This trip also had some great wild life viewing. We saw several bears and moose, birds, a fox, and a coyote. One bear even walked down the road in front of our bus for a few miles. The whole trip was really amazing, and I would have to say that it was a definitely highlight! Although I was at first a bit trepidatious about heading out into the famed Denali, once I was there I spent the entire time being completely captivated by the expansive scenery and fantastic beauty. (Ok, not the entire time...some of that was spent shivering to sleep in the chilly wilderness evenings, but mostly). :) The mountains there are friendly...they seem to just be sitting there waiting for you to climb them, and the joy of heading out across them with no trail is a sort of freedom and adventure that everyone should get to live. Needless to say, we had a great time.
And now we are here in Fairbanks enjoying great food and trying to stay dry. Apparently we have hit a bit of a wet season here in Alaska, but we are heading north yet again and hope to see sunny skies. Tomorrow we head out for the Brooks Range and then back here to Fairbanks. Our heading North is almost done, and I'm not sure what to think...hmmm...until then...it's north for now.

There and Back Again

Hello All…We’ve had a great last week just chillin’ here in Talkeetna, Alaska. We’ve had some rather rainy days which provided ample time for us to work on the big box of books that we brought along, listen to some Car Talk podcasts, and hang out in town at the local roadhouse where we have renewed our love of homemade pies and baked goods. I am finally starting to feel kind of at home here. The town is fairly small, and I am starting to run into people that I know around town. I love the local thing, and we are really enjoying getting to chat with people a little more.
This past week we took a day and drove up to Fairbanks where we got an oil change, checked out the campus, had arguably the best lasagna ever, and got to see the area. It was lovely with rolling hills and a river in the beautiful plain. On the drive we saw 7 moose, and I was pretty thrilled with Rodney’s photographic endeavors out the car window.
On the sunny days we have had a great time out hiking. With his berry book in tow, Rodney’s been identifying the local berries, and we’ve gotten to eat a lot of blueberries. I was nervous, but the locals haul them out of the woods in bags and encourage you with reckless abandon. They’re really good.
After almost everyone we encounter asking if we’d tried fishing yet, we finally caved and I got my very first fishing license ever. Even though we have little rods and didn’t really have any of the attendant gear, we bought some way too heavy line, a fillet knife, and hit the shores. We decided to go where there were lots of people, and while the fishing there wasn’t so wonderful, we preferred that company to the company of grizzlies. We spent several chilly hours casting, and Rodney pulled in a really pretty rainbow trout that we couldn’t keep. Although we didn’t catch anything else, we got to see a lot of salmon that had already spawned float back downstream to die and there were lots of other fish swimming right near the shore. Quite the sight. At least now I can always say that I have fished in Alaska.
We are heading down the road tomorrow for a scenic drive on the Denali Highway, a dirt road that heads to a small town called Paxson. Next week, we are going to get to go into Denali and camp for four days. Until then I think we are going to really enjoy our last several days here in Talkeetna reading, hiking, and dining on the scrumptious cinnamon rolls here at the Roadhouse café.