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I’m back!

Well, I’m back from my 6 month trip around the world!  I saved money for 7 years, quit my job, sold or gave away most everything I own, and for the last 2 months trekked nonstop with a backpack and suitcase. The first 4 months I did short trips to Barcelona, Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, visited friends and family I haven’t seen in years in some cases, and took my niece to Cedar Point for a weekend, then went to San Diego and Mexico.  After I dropped my cats off with my mom so I could travel nonstop, I went to London (day trip to Stonehenge, Bath, Cotswolds), Edinburgh, Scottish Highlands (including Loch Ness, Isle of Skye, Glencoe), Dublin (day trip to Cliffs of Moher and Galway), Paris, Venice, Rome (day trips to Vatican City, Pompei, Positano), Chiang Mai (including Elephant Nature Park), Krabi (day trip to Phi Phi Islands), Phuket, Bangkok, Tokyo, Kamakura/Enoshi Island, Hakone, Kyoto, Osaka (day trips to Nara, Himeji, Hikone), and Iceland (my mom came with me on that one!) There have been a lot of ups and downs, the more important ones as follows:

Pros:

–  Reconnected with family, old friends that I haven’t seen in years, and met a lot of fun new people.

– Visited places I’ve always dreamed about, and saw things I’ve always wanted to see while they’re still there.

– Tried new food, new desserts, new drinks…and yet, still lost about 5 inches on my waist probably from walking an average of 7-9 miles per day almost every day.  Usually uphill, which I still haven’t figured out the logistics in that.  If you go up you’d think you’d have to go down but it always seemed to be uphill!

– Saw new cultures and learned a TON of history including doing some ancestry research in England/Scotland/Ireland.

– Worked things out on my own whenever there was a problem and learned not to have a meltdown about the little things even if I wasn’t happy about it.

– Learned how to walk slower. Everyone in my family power walks everywhere and are masters at weaving through crowds, we also usually inhale our food rather than eat and enjoy it, it’s just the way it has always been.  I was walking around Chicago today and for the first time everyone was pushing past ME and I was seeing things I haven’t acknowledge in the 8 years that I’ve lived here.  Like, was that restaurant always there?  It looks neat, I never noticed it before…

Cons:

– I missed my pets so bad, I can’t wait to see them when I go to my mom’s for the holidays this weekend!

– The sheer volume of tourists is crazy!  I’m not complaining, since I am also one of those tourists and I think it’s amazing that the world has gotten to a point where so many people can enjoy it, it was just really surprising.  I used to live in Japan 15 years ago so a lot of my stops there were for nostalgia purposes and the number of people in places that had previously been practically unknown was shocking. The main concern I had was about safety, a lot of these places weren’t designed to hold that many people and those mega-tour buses are way too big in a lot of cases (I almost got squished by one!) I used to work at construction sites and we have OSHA in the United States and I think I got a few new gray hairs just from some of the safety related things I’ve seen.  I’m also an environmental scientist, so seeing some of the unhygienic things people were doing in some locations made me cringe. Bring a hand towel and hand sanitizer everywhere with you, for real! I would need an entire separate post to explain all of the people, behaviors, and safety issues though.  I’m putting this under “cons” but honestly this was one of the most interesting parts of the trip given my profession.

– I get why it’s hard for some people to understand how bad climate change is especially if they don’t travel.  It was really sad to see some of the locations because of all the trash and pollution, irregular weather patterns, damaged ecosystems, and changing behaviors of the animals. I already knew a lot about the impacts of the climate crisis, but some places really opened my eyes to how bad it’s truly becoming.

– Blisters.  So. Many. Blisters.  Even with broken in boots and moleskin and bandages.  I’m fairly convinced it’s inevitable.

– The scammers.  I managed to avoid them mostly, but one got me in Venice and it was so obvious I had to laugh after I realized it.  Rookie mistake!
Anywho, now that I’m back I’m going to spend the holidays with family then decide if I want to be a responsible adult and get back to work, or buy an RV and do an epic 6 month National Park road trip with my cats…

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Grand Teton National Park: Part 3

I got on up and grabbed a bagel and some coffee (regular coffee is slowly growing on me), then took a shower and cleaned up the camper cabin.  Said my farewells to everyone at the lodge, then headed south towards Grand Teton.  I had already gone back and forth on the inner road, so after a quick stop at Jackson Dam for some photos of the thunderstorms going over the mountains, I took the outer road south towards Jackson.  The views were different, and still gorgeous.  Bonus, one of the pullouts was next to the Elk Ranch Flats, a horse farm/dude ranch, and the horses had learned if they stood by the fence the tourists would come over and pet them!  I hung out around there for a good half hour just petting horses and taking photos of them.  There was this one horse that was a big guy, white with brown freckles, who kept following me around and if I got close enough he would wrap his head around me and snuggle then lip my hair.  He was soooo sweet!  After I said farewell to him I looked at my hands and saw all the fleas, oops, hopefully they’re gone now.  I haven’t seen any.

I kept going south, stopping at the various turnouts for the view of the Tetons.  I stopped by the Gros Ventre turnout and visited the Mormon Row Historic District Moulton Barns, and their other cool buildings.  Then I proceeded to an area along a creek/wetland where moose were supposedly known to frequent, but didn’t see anything.  It was still a nice quiet place, so I just sat and listened to the water for a bit until I ran out of time.  I drove to DQ for some food and gassed up the rental, then headed to the airport.  I guess it was because I got there mid-afternoon, but it was hardly busy at all and there was no line for TSA screening.  Totally didn’t need to get there 2 hours early.  But that gave me time to chat with the TSA agents who admired my skull cat t-shirt and I got to talking to one agent exchanging stories about our cats for a while until other people showed up and she had to get back to work.  I thought it was cute 🙂

The flight home was uneventful, and I miss this place already. Although I got a lot done this week, I also missed a lot too. I guess I’ll have to go back!

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Grand Teton National Park: Part 2

After the long days on Tuesday and Wednesday I was pretty wiped out.  I slept in until 7ish, and I don’t know if I’m just getting used to it or what but it didn’t seem nearly as cold and I slept pretty well in my blanket cocoon.  I went and got a late breakfast, then changed into already dirty clothes and drove over to the trail ride area.  I rode a lovely, big, brown and black horse named “Ed” with the lady that works at the convenience store, Tanya the waitress, and Christine the horse guide.  We rode on the backwoods trails at a leisurely pace and saw a mule deer and her two babies, a great view of the mulberry creek/wetland area, and the woods that burned back in 2016 and is regrowing.  While we were riding I kept noticing these old large stickup groundwater monitoring wells.  I asked Christine if this area had been used for anything other than the lodge or park in the past, and she said the area used to be an old military area.  That made sense, and would explain why they were/had been monitoring the ground water.  She didn’t know what I was talking about so I pointed out the wells and told her they were probably monitoring for metals, but they were so rusted probably not anymore.  Christine laughed about that because people had been asking her for a while what those were but she didn’t know, now she knows!  Once you start doing environmental work you can’t stop doing it, even on vacation.  In the wetland areas I was still finding myself trying to identify and mentally delineate them. 

After the ride I took a shower to get the horse stank off me, then spent time backing up photos and clearing space on SD cards.  It was almost 2pm by the time I got out of the campgrounds and drove south towards the Grand Tetons.  I stopped at Signal Point and drove up the mountain to a gorgeous view and spoke a little Japanese with a Japanese tourist family, and on my way back down there was a mule deer right next to the road eating. Further down, a full grown bull elk was laying down maybe 50 feet off the road.  I pulled over, of course, and got my telephoto lens out and got some great pictures.  There were two wildlife management officers right there directing people to move closer, or away, or left, or right, depending on what the elk was doing but the elk didn’t seem to care about the people at all.  Eventually he crossed the road and headed off into the woods. 

I continued down to Jenny Lake, and I was going to take the ferry over and climb up to Hidden Falls and Inspiration point, but by this point it was almost 5pm and the weather couldn’t figure out if it wanted to rain or stay sunny.  Given that my feet were already blistered and hurting, I didn’t think I really wanted to hike uphill for 1.5 miles in the rain, so I took a pass on the ferry and wandered the lake perimeter checking out all the cool mountain rocks for about an hour.  Then I went up to Jackson Lodge, which was so busy by the time I found a parking spot I decided to just skip it and go up to Colter Bay Lodge.  This one was calmer, and had their own rock beach, so I again walked up and down the rock beach looking at rocks and enjoying the view. 

Eventually around 7pm I got hungry, so I went up to the marina just north of Colter Bay where the Lodge staff had all been praising the pizza at Leek’s Pizzeria.  To be fair, it was pretty good, especially considering the other options in the area.  You get tired of sandwiches and salads after a few days so a super cheesy greasy pizza really hit the spot.  After eating I wandered across to the marina to watch the sun set and then headed back north to the Lodge.  I stopped by the main lodge to get online for a bit and use the bathroom, and when I came back out noticed lightning coming out from the south, struggling to get over the mountains.  A big group of us sat in the parking lot watching the extreme “War of the Worlds” level light show as the storm made its way over the mountains and towards us.  At first it was just impressive flashes with no sound at all, but once it got over the mountains the thunder was SUPER loud, and once it got too close for comfort I hopped back in my car and went to the camper cabin.  I stood outside chatting with neighbors (and petting their dogs) and watching the light show for another half hour or so before it started to rain and we all ran inside.  When it started raining it rained HARD with almost constant lightning and thunder.  It was pretty cool! Definitely glad I was in the camper cabin and not a tent!