We're Back!
After a full month on the road, we’ve finally made it back! It was a strange feeling to drive over the Willamette Pass and head towards home given that “home” had been Beast for the previous thirty days. I liken it to my first trips back from Iraq, where everything seemed both familiar and alien at the same time. We got back on Saturday afternoon and by Sunday both Ann and I asked each other, “Can we just take off and get back on the road?”
Beast was amazing. As a vehicle, she took us everywhere we wanted to go, even those trails where, after the fact, we realized we shouldn’t be on. Did you know that Beast is as nimble as an ATV? And as for a home - she kept us dry, warm, and in comfort in an amazingly wide range of weather conditions (can you say: Hurricane?). Yes, she demands a bit of efficiency (in fact, quite a lot of it), and Ann and I are lucky we like each other so much given the intimacy of the interior space, but we couldn’t ask for a better combination of moving home and 4-wheeling, off-road vehicle.
This trip was a bit more “eventful” than our previous trips. A full 1/4 of the trip got trashed, not by choice mind you. (We’ll just have to do that part of it on some other trip!). I got sick - twice. Though I dodged the bullet each time by taking care of myself, at the cost of lost photographs and lots of medication. And Beast needed minor surgery in Loa, Utah of all places (thank you Sportsmobile for your excellent warranty performance, and Brian Auto). Amongst the beauty and wonder of the desert Southwest, our patience was tested. It was certainly a vacation that had several different phases to it and its share of surprises.
It’s Monday as I write this and I’m still downloading and converting images from the trip (talk about testing my patience), while also trying to get the rest of my life in order (a box of mail sits on the floor beside me as I engage in avoidance behavior by writing this post). Luckily, I’d informed everyone that I probably wouldn’t be at full working capacity until Tuesday, so the pull in that direction is put off by one more day. In any event, it’s going to take a while to develop the images and write the posts detailing our trip - please bear with me just a bit longer. Hopefully, in-between the longer story posts we’ll have a few shooting the shooter and other posts to change things up a bit. As one might expect from a month-long trip, we have lots of material to work with.
So, we’re back and in the works to share our latest adventure with you! I guess that means we have to put off planning our next adventure for a while . . . at least until the itch to get out again becomes unbearable.
