The Adventures of Kinky Reggae: A Vagabond for Beauty

From Atlanta I drove to Alabama, where I visited the Tuskegee Airmen NHS, which is still a functioning airport! If you had your own plane, I think it would be really cool to visit these historic airports. I can’t remember much of what I learned there... what I mostly remember is thinking that these pilots were really good looking men!  I retraced my trip from last summer and drove the highway from Montgomery to Selma. Last summer, I didn’t make it all the way to Selma and was mad at myself for not seeing the bridge. This summer, I made it happen. It felt very profound, standing there and thinking about the events of Bloody Sunday. And the thing that struck me the most (about all of the civil rights sites) is that this stuff didn’t happen all that long ago! We’ve come a long way in the past 50 years, but we have a long way to go.  My hotel that night was in Jackson, Mississippi, so it was a long day of driving. I had to stop in Jackson because Medgar Evers’s home was recently declared a

I got to stay with Laura in Atlanta! Laura is someone I greatly admire. We went to the same church in Phoenix, where she worked as a public defender. In Atlanta, she has her own practice doing immigration law. Her work is so important, and it was interesting to hear what immigration actually looks like from someone who’s actually in the middle of all the mess, not just the media. It is even worse than I thought.  Anyway, on my first night there, her boyfriend came over and they made the most amazing dinner with homemade pesto. We sat out on her front porch and watched the fireflies and chatted for hours.  The next day, I visited Chattahoochee NRA, which wasn’t that exciting because it was way too hot to actually hike. Also, traffic was super stressful... I wasn’t a fan of driving in Atlanta! That night, Laura revealed that she had never seen Toy Story 3, so we watched that and both cried our eyes out. That movie gets me every time!

Okay, 5 months later, let’s keep talking about last summer’s national park quest. 😂 On my way to Atlanta I stopped at Ocmulgee National Monument, which was one of those unexpectedly awesome sites where I wanted to stay much longer. I always wanted to be an archaeologist when I grew up. (And honestly, the way teaching has been lately, I’m wondering if it’s too late in life for a career change). I’ve been to some other mound sites, and I hate to say this, but they were not exactly thrilling. I think Effigy Mounds in Iowa would have been better to see from the air, but the mound site in Ohio... I mean, it’s just mounds. So why was Ocmulgee so fascinating to me?? Who knows, maybe it just had a certain kind of energy. They also had lots of interesting artifacts and this earth lodge you could go in. The floor was 1000 years old.  Next up was Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, north of Atlanta. This was a popular recreation site; lots of bikers. This is something I’ve noticed about

A few weeks ago, Katie and I explored some waterfalls as part of a special project she's working on. Our first stop was the Grotto in Payson. It's just 1.2 miles round tip, making it a very popular destination. We saw a young family there, and the mom was just letting her toddler play in the water and dirt and rocks and was obviously in no hurry to leave. I thought this was such a sweet way to spend a Saturday morning and something I would love to do with my kids someday. Our next stop was someplace called Chicken Creek Falls, which is right by a dirt road. We had to scramble down a steep incline and got dirty and scraped up, and it wasn't much of a waterfall. But that's all part of the adventure! (Picture by Katie) Finally, we hiked to Bullion Falls by Marysvale. I could have sworn I was in the PNW, and I bet it's even more spectacular in the spring. How is this not more of a popular hike?? None of my friends had ever heard of it. Which actually, is kind of nic

Well, I still haven't finished writing about the summer trip, but I'm going to just go out of order here and talk about my hike yesterday because I've learned that, if I don't write about it immediately, it will take 6 months. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother trying to keep up with this... I don't want to be a writer, and I'm not trying to be famous. But it's for me. Like, when I went to Yosemite last month, I was able to look back at my blog and see which hikes I'd done so I wouldn't accidentally repeat one. So, I will keep writing! My canyoneering plans for yesterday fell through. I was so tempted to just sit on my couch and watch college football and read a book, but it was a beautiful day and I thought, "This is the perfect opportunity to go somewhere I've been wanting to go!" I decided to drive 4 hours (each way!) to the Ruby Mountains. My reasoning was that I can't do a super long hike right now with this bad hip, so it 

(I feel like this title is just inviting inappropriate remarks.) My friend Ashley and I want some help choosing where to go on a road trip in two weeks! On Friday, September 27, we’ll have a random number generator choose our trip from the entries our friends have submitted. We’ll leave after work on Friday for a surprise adventure! How it works: Use the Google form below to submit an entry. Please check the rules first! On September 27, we’ll log into the form, see how many entries there are, and then use a random number generator to choose a number for us. Whichever suggestion corresponds to that number is the trip we’ll go on! If that suggestion didn’t meet the trip criteria, we’ll use the number generator again. The rules: The destination must be... - within 6 hours of SLC - no longer than a 6 mile hike (round trip... I’ve got that bad hip) - legally accessible without a permit or reservation - someplace we can drive to in my Subaru Forester  - an appro

I think Jimmy Carter is a pretty cool dude, but honestly, I didn’t spend my time at his National Historic Site. The site actually encompasses a lot of the town, as well as his farm. I wandered around the high school for a little while, but that was it.  I was mostly in a hurry to get to Andersonville. And then it was kind of disappointing! I guess I was hoping for an informative film to give me some background knowledge before I explored, but the film was just aboutprisoners of war throughout history. There was a motorcycle gang in the theater with me, and they were super into it. But I slipped out early.  I saw the cemetery: and drove around the grounds of the prison camp. I learned that the prisoners were responsible for providing their own shelters! There was also this random spring that they built a monument around. 

On the way to DeSoto the next day, I stopped for gas and found myself next to a Portillo’s!!! So exciting. Probably more exciting than DeSoto National Memorial.There wasn’t a whole lot to see here. I learned from the video that he was a real a-hole. Just obsessed with finding gold. The natives quickly learned they could easily get rid of him by telling him the gold was just a little farther away. When he died, they dumped his body into the Mississippi River. The expedition eventually gave up, but not before spreading disease and destruction across the southeastern U.S. Several days later,while visiting Ocmulgee Mounds in Georgia, I learned how DeSoto had totally screwed them.  That night I got to see my Uncle Joel in Gainesville! He took me out to dinner with a friend, and then we went over to his other friends’ house for dessert.  He took me out for breakfast the next morning, too, and filled up my gas tank. Oh, and he bought me this huuuuuge bag of snacks! He even included clips for

When we visited Florida over New Year’s, I was yelling, “Fucking Florida!” within about 10 minutes of beingin the car. After having driven in 48 states, I can confidently say that Florida and New Jersey have the worst drivers.  It was almost funny how, as soon as I crossed from Georgia into Florida, everything got stressful. First stop: Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine. I’ve been here several times, and Alex got the stamp forme a few years ago, but I thought it would be nice to stop and get my own stamp. Nope!!! So much traffic and no parking anywhere near the fort! This is the closest I got! Then I went to Fort Matanzas, the site of another Spanish-French massacre. (I felt really bad for the French!) The fort is just across this river, but there’s no bridgeso I would have had to wait over an hour for a ferry that they thought might not even run due to the weather. So once again, I didn’t actually get inside the fort. But then it was time to visit one of my old Florida kick-it s