Date: 2019-04-03
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: light rain

Springtime is my big time for adventures. At least, it has been the last few years. Although my entire life is kind of a weird adventure at this point.I actually set out with half an intention to keep a journal on my 2019 adventure (which has been an odd, disjointed road trip). Alas, I have become lazy and spoiled and often wonder how the heck I managed to type out journal entries on my tiny little smartphone on the AT... and how I kept the battery charged enough. See?! SPOILED. Road trip living is much different than trail living... I have luxuries like a cigarette lighter, a truck to sleep in (no wet tent, yay!!) and space to store ten times as much random crap and junk as I actually need (I have an entire plastic "camp box" full of stuff I have barely touched during my last 5 weeks of wandering).So instead, I'm just going to write one long entry. I know if I don't do it now, I'll never remember, and my future self will want to be able to have her memory revived a little. Thanks to my sister for the extra push to do it, because I really have had the intention to do so for a while... it's a good, long story.I really wanted to write an update journal entry on my four-year anniversary of beginning the AT (which was only two days ago, so I'm not a total failure). I celebrated in style! I spent four nights camping at Bandelier National Monument, an hour or so outside of Santa Fe. Bandelier was an experience. The days were, for the most part, warm and sunny and gorgeous. The day I arrived, I snagged a campsite (specifically chosen for proximity to the bathroom and sunniness - I'm sick of being cold) and then headed to the visitor center to wander the main trail, climbing up little ladders into cliff dwellings, pondering the ruins of an old pueblo, and scaling the 140 climb (mostly ladders) to the Alcove House in flip-flops (one old guy made a joking comment about my appropriate footwear... but they actually worked quite well. I mean, I didn't slip and die, so...).That wasn't my anniversary day, though. I had bigger plans for that. Honestly, my AT finish date is usually the one I care about more, but it's not like I have anything better to do than celebrate... so... I spent April 1st this day on trails.My road trip has really been a park and trails trip. I originally intended to do a LONG (2-3 month) road trip over the winter, but plans kind of changed because of my EMT testing schedule (I passed, I'm officially a certified EMT now, yayyy!). By the time I finish, I will have spent 6 weeks driving around the southwestish area of the country.I left home in Connecticut (did I mention I passed the EMT tests? It was kind of a stressful experience) at the end of January, then drove down to Texas, visiting a couple of friends on the way. After spending a few weeks with a friend there, and reveling in the warmth of a place much much much further south than my frigid homeland, I headed back out on the road, leaving a significant amount of my possessions (mostly things needed for work) in my friend's garage. South Texas was warm but also really humid and kind of gross and the urban sprawl really got to me, so... I was happy to escape. I was happy to escape for many, many reasons. I will be happy to return, get some respite from the road, and collect my stuff again before I head to my summer job, but... I was in need of more outdoor time than I was getting there. It would have helped if I was a beach person, but... I'm not (sorry, mom).I have been park-hopping for a month, as well as visiting some friends. Since I started working for the National Park Service in 2017, as a ranger at Acadia, I have collected quite a few friends scattered across the country. I also have an amazing aunt in Tuscon who fed and housed me and spoiled me rotten, and Matt and Jeralyn in Las Vegas (they also housed me for a weekend during my thru-hike), who introduced me to the life-changing concept of sushi burritos. Anyway, I've been all over the place. Unlike the AT, I haven't had a lot of personal interactions. Most of my camping has been solitary. I huddle up in the back of my truck on cold nights and try to read or watch pre-downloaded Netflix (this is what happens when I have fancy technology and can sit in McDonald's drinking coffee and sucking away at the Wi-Fi). I don't really mind it, though. I actually haven't been that lonely. I was in a much different place on the AT, more emotional and in need of some life-changing transition. At this point, I at least have a career track and a job lined up. That's not to say my head doesn't spin, worrying about all the possible things I can screw up and how easily I can get derailed. And, of course, there's always my odd and frustrating love life to uselessly overthink and get frustrated over.But really, I have been happy. I've been having fun, and enjoying my own company, and just... living. There are times when I get extremely homesick, and there were a couple of days where I was trying to plan and was just burnt out and tired and ready to go back to Texas and be a lazy bum of a nomad friend and just sleep on my friend's couch for three weeks. Overall, though... I wake up every morning, even when it's cold and icy and snowy, and I cook gross instant oatmeal on my little butane stove and just think how lucky I am to be healthy, and to have enough savings to make this work (I've accepted the fact that I'm never going to retire since I just blow whatever I save when I'm working on off-season adventures), and that I always have a safety net to fall back on and people to support and enable me.I have become an excellent nomad at this point. Last spring, my car broke down and I bought a little Ford Ranger pickup truck. I bought a used cap for it, which locks, and looks very ugly, but works well, in North Dakota last summer after a significant amount of Craigslist-hunting.Pizza Fairy Dan built a platform that sits in the truck bed over the winter, while I was home agonizing over blood pressures and incomprehensible medical terminology, trying to cram a ridiculous amount of information into my brain in a rather short span of time.Now, I can fit not only my sleeping human body in the back of the truck, I have a bed/workbench/practical way to store all my unnecessary junk that I haul around with me. It's fantastic. It actually has worked out very well, too. I sewed some little curtains to cover the windows for privacy, and manage to keep most things well-organized. This road trip was something I had wanted to to for years, but it just didn't come together. Last winter, I volunteered at Acadia and then spring training for work got in the way of making it happen. Sometimes life just doesn't let things come together, but... it worked out. Here I am, sitting in Santa Fe, trying to decide if I want to be really unhealthy and buy a bag of Doritos or not... ...and I'm happy! Tired and a little cold and starting to get hungry, but happy.From Big Bend National Park, to Guadalupe, and Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands, Gila Cliff Dwellings, Saguaro, Death Valley, and more... I just hop from park to park, camp where I can, and hike. I hike and explore, I watch the films in the visitor centers, wander through the little museums, marvel at the things people built hundreds and thousands of years ago, and puzzle over petroglyphs.When I was at Saguaro National Park, I did a little trail near a picnic area that leads up to some petroglyphs. There are multiple signs that say, "DON'T STEP ON THE ROCKS" and there's even a very nice little railing to block people from doing exactly that. When I got to those nice lovely petroglyph-covered rocks, I found a man, on the other side of the railing, stepping not only on a rock but ON A PETROGLYPH, taking pictures. My inner park ranger died a little.The same man then looked at a duo of cute friendly squirrels and said, "I wish I had something to feed them!" and my inner park ranger cried a little. It's funny how the things that I have learned and way that I have lived the last few years have changed my perspective on a lot of things. I think I get too easily frustrated sometimes, though I know a lot of people just don't know the difference. You can't know what you haven't been taught. But sometimes I just want to grab people by the shoulders, shake them, and yell, "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!"I have seen plenty of cool stuff as well as odd people. Abandoned mines in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, for example. Actually this trip was the first time I've been to the desert so it was kind of surreal to be in such a different environment. I like the dry heat, though I always feel dehydrated and thirsty and I am constantly guzzling water (I swear the other day I stopped to pee six times in one mile while hiking). I've seen an interesting variety of new desert plants, snow in the desert, the impressive expanse of the Grand Canyon (it was cold and snowy there, I suffered a little), quite a few old structures and dwellings and pueblos, the Hoover Dam (way too many people), huge sand dunes in weird places and the Las Vegas strip. I went ziplining for the first time in Tuscon (did I mention how great my aunt is?), drove past a friend standing on the side of the road in a park who I didn't even know lived there (and then slept on his living room floor), and have spent many nights snuggled up in triple sleeping bags.It's been pretty great.So... my AT start date anniversary at Bandelier was also pretty great. I got up early, because I have basically become a creature dictated by the sun and the moon at this point. Of course there was snow everywhere and my truck doors were frozen shut, but... after oatmeal and coffee, I set out from the campground wearing two pairs of pants, and trekked along the trail which ends overlooking the remains of the pueblo village of Tyuonyi. Then, warmed up, with some of the ice melted off of my truck, I headed out on the real hike of the day: the Burro Trail. I don't know why it's called that. I just picked it because it had a convenient starting location and was long, good for a day hike. After an initial climb up out of the canyon where the visitor center and cliff dwellings are located, the trail is pretty flat for miles and miles. The Bandelier backcountry, though.... is amazing. Even after a few fires have taken out a lot of the trees... it was actually really nice to see so many trees after I spent so much time in the desert. I encountered very, very few people on the backcountry trails. It was strange and a little sad. I like the solitude of hiking alone (especially after experiencing Zion a couple of weeks ago, jam-packed with shirtless, obnoxious college bros on spring break), but I want people to be out in nature, utilizing what the parks and public lands have to offer. I saw more mountain lion tracks than people (and spent a mile of my hike out of the canyon leading down to the Rio Grande with bear spray in one hand, trekking poles in the other... just in case). It was a glorious hike. But flat, and not too difficult, and it went by quickly. I topped off the day of trails by walking from where I had parked my truck down the Falls Trail, about a mile and a half to a very beautiful waterfall view (especially raging after a day of snow and rain). I saw more people on this trail, but still... not as many as it deserved.I ended my day with a campfire, a hot, delicious, not very nutritious dinner, and some s'mores. Ironically, I somehow neglected to bring my cheap metal marshmallow-roasting sticks (after numerous iterations of packing, unpacking, and repacking in a Texas garage...) and ended up roasting my marshmallows over the flame of my butane stove on my titanium spork... just like one night on the AT with Chris, when I burnt my lips on the metal of the spork (I did not repeat that disastrous part of the experience... I can learn!). It seemed appropriate, how it worked out.I could probably write forever but I think I've gotten the important bits... and it's about that time of day where I stop functioning because, well... I'm tired. My body is exhausted, constantly on the move and with very little time spent sitting still. This journey is nothing like the exhaustion of the AT, or of the henro route around Shikoku, but... it keeps my restless soul content. I'm living, and life isn't so bad.