The Adventures of Kinky Reggae: A Vagabond for Beauty

The wanderlust just hit me HARD. I had been feeling kind of ambivalent about vagabonding this summer. I feel like I’ve hit all the big places I wanted to see out west and wasn’t really excited to go anywhere. But I started looking at maps yesterday, and maps get me all excited. All of a sudden, I want to go everywhere and see everything. I  want to sit with my feet in a river on a hot day with a cold drink and a trashy romance novel. I want to watch sunsets, and come back to camp with no agenda beyond writing a few postcards. And I want to watch Fuller House. (I only pay for Netflix over the summer in case I need some entertainment on the road.) I can’t decide exactly where I want to go. After I drop off my stuff in Utah, I might do a little backpacking in southern Utah. Then I'll head across New Mexico and collect some stamps and finally see Chaco Canyon. Then I’ll grab those stamps in the Texas panhandle and head across Kansas and Missouri and visit all of those na

I am trying to collect as many stamps as possible here in the Southwest before I move, so Denise suggested we spend a weekend in California at her condo so I could get the Santa Monica stamp. It ended up being quite the traumatic weekend! SoCal is oh so glamorous, but definitely not for me! The first mishap was a blown out tire on the freeway about 45 minutes from Dana Point. There was something small in the road that appeared out of nowhere. I hit it and the tire immediately went flat. It was kind of scary, but more than that, I just felt so bad about it! Brian had to come out and change the tire for us; it was a late night. The tire was under warranty, so it was only $20 to fix, but I still felt terrible that it happened while I was driving. The next morning, Denise insisted that I take their car up to Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. 5 minutes away from home, I was rear-ended at a stoplight. The damage was minimal, but still- super stressful! I was so nervous d

This is going to be a long post. SO many things that happened in just 48 hours, and I want to remember them all. Meow. We left for Zion after work on Friday. Things got a little silly on the way up there. Why did Susie fall out of the tree? She had no arms. Knock knock Who’s there? Not Susie! (Hannah almost ended a relationship when the guy wouldn’t let her finish this joke…) Then, I was texting with my friend John, but it was my turn to drive. Hannah took over and typed what I said. And then added the word “meow” into each text.   All weekend, someone would say something, and someone else would add, “meowmeow.” The rain began as soon as we found a campsite, and the girls hastily set up their tent in the dark. (I got to sleep in Stella, Sia’s Jeep. Because I am not a fan of tents.) The girls had a pretty good laugh in the morning when they saw the tent in the daylight. We left the tent to head i