When he first came to the mountains his life was far away

out of the plains into the mountains. mountain air. mountain sky. denver, the mile high city, is like some kind of outdoor utopia. a major metropolis streams and bike trails connecting neighborhoods, people kayaking home from work.
and just up the way is boulder, a sight for sore eyes. our skin, so used to life at 8000 feet, so happy to be in this dry thin air.
i never get tired of looking up into the mountains.

i also never get tired of finding family members scattered around the country! well hello taylor davison! nice to meet you garron!

should we just move to boulder and become city mountain folk?
alas, the call of our dear sweet california pulled us west. into the sunset we drove.

and so it happened. we crossed over the rockies. through snow. in august. the backbone of the west.

Save my love through loneliness, save my love through sorrow

before this epic sabattical, i worked 80+ hours a week, barely taking a day off a week, never taking a vacation or extended time off. come to think of it, the only real time off i took in the last 2 years was when i got pneumonia. from this context, i have been thinking about the fact that i haven't worked in over 4 months; that i have spent the last three months just being, just engaging my surroundings, enjoying my far flung friends, looking at the sky.
this is america, where an almost 30 year old is almost always fine tuning the career track and life track; looking for their first home, getting married, having babies. my whole life i thought this is where i would be when i reached 29 1/2. instead i find myself unshowered for 3 days, completely divorced from the expectations that i had for my own life.
i am in the west, so close to my california, my "real life". i am trying to reconcile these two versions of myself, the one who by all measures should be getting married and perfecting a career, and the one who wants to look at the sky all afternoon.
i had this idea that maybe i'll start a visiting service, and if you'd like, i'll go visit your relatives that you don't have time to visit. i'll babysit your niece, i'll take your grandma out to dinner.
maybe instead, you should all go visit your grandmas, and your aunts, and you best buddy who moved to chicago. chicago is awesome. your friends are awesome. take it from us, you won't be disappointed.

children of the corn

kansas.8 hours in a straight line.

goodness gracious great balls of fire!

memphis! it was elvis week, which means lots of insane ladies buying elvis lampshades and the line to get into graceland was absurd. we drove by. it was a big house. hello elvis!
beale street has apparently been completely redone from back in the days. a local girl told us that memphis knocked down more history than most cities have.
memphis. known for being the birthplace of rock and roll and making delicious bbq.
the lady behind the counter called todd baby as she handed him his pulled pork sandwich. the south!
we toured sun records.
imagine your life without elvis, johnny cash, roy orbison, carl perkins, jerry lee lewis, etc. etc. and all the rad bands that have been influenced by them and all the blues bands that i don't know the names of.
it is because of sam phillips and sun records and memphis recording company that you don't have to!
sam phillips: "Everyone knew that I was just a struggling cat down here trying to develop new and different artists, and get some freedom in music, and tap some resources and people that weren't being tapped."
so rad!
just like todd!

do you know what it means to miss new orleans

new orleans.
when i was a teenager, i read all of anne rice's books about vampires and witches, and thus had developed a very tangible and rich mental picture of it. crumbling, kudzu, wrought iron, victorian, creole, voodoo, you know. i also worked at kcrw during hurricane katrina, and spent all day transfixed on the wreckage and the horror stories. the aftermath, that unbelievable mishandling by everyone involved.
so with these two very intense mental images, we checked into our hotel in the french quarter. i had forgotten all about the french quarter somehow. bourbon street, with all its excesses and tourists drinking beers at 10am.
a horrible fact about new orleans is that 3 years after hurricane katrina there are so many neighborhoods still in complete ruin. we drove through the lower 9th ward, names so familiar after months of hearing them on the radio, where 3 out of 5 houses are still empty, destroyed, spraypaint on the doors from being searched 3 years earlier.
how do you reconcile this? this is the usa, where a major metropolitan american city is still gutted in so much of the city. it wrecks me. i just do not understand. i was trying to find a comparison, like is after the 89 earthquake what if 50% of san francisco was still destroyed?







new orleans. i am fairly certain that i've been impacted by this visit more than anywhere else. i want to cry and i want to be part of the spirit that is not letting this city slip away. these amazing business people who are defying the government's inefficiency and have rebuilt themselves and the restaurants that are back, and the high school brass band playing on canal street because that is what they do. new orleans is so mysterious, even bourbon street. it is just like i romanticized as a teenager, and it is just like what npr told me. and it is more. it is young families and hipster diners, and the birthplace of the cocktail, and crawfish, and cemeteries filled with ghosts and slaves and rich old french families. and it is the worst natural disaster to ever happen on american soil and the worst handling of such a thing.

westward ho!

we made our first right-hand turn. heading west. we drove through the florida panhandle, along the coast.
we found the wakulla springs: the worlds deepest freshwater spring. it puts out about 300 gallons of fresh water a day. after swimming in 85 degree ocean water for a week, swimming in 75 degree fresh water was the best.
swamp thing, tarzan, and the creature from the black lagoon were all filmed here.
there are alligators and manatees here. like in the swimming area on occasions. it is crazy!





the beaches in the panhandle are insane. the sand is quartz, washed down from the appalachian's, and it looks like fine sugar.

they call this area "the redneck riviera" because it is so close to the south.

it is baffling that this country is this big and diverse; that we can be having a tropical vacation in the middle of our usa tour is absurd.

we crossed the border into alabama. did you know that alabama had beaches like this? i surely did not.