Driving home to Whidbey Island, five months after we left

We arrived home today.  Exhausted from the 26 hours of driving.  

We spent our first night 600 miles from the Mojave Desert where we began the day, camping at a truck stop at a casino.  We thought we should give something like this a try.  If you have a VERY good sound machine, it's workable:

See us with the big guys?

It's not exactly the Mojave Desert.  Here is where we were the previous night.  Guess which type of place fits us the best?

The second day's drive was over 500 miles.  We go through our favorite part of the drive home, in the Mt. Shasta area.  

We stayed at a state park.  We even got to catch some of the Super Bowl, which was a shock.  

 

 Arriving home:

The least fun part of getting home.  Crawling under the house, most of the distance on my belly, to turn the water back on.  I'm too old for this.

We were gone from our home for five months.  Although we have done this six times before, it is still hard for us to fully grasp.  That's a long time to be away from our home, and yet when we walked into it we felt like we had just been there.

We drove fewer miles on this road trip than we had on any of our previous ones, as we didn't go as far east as we have on some.  We also continue to learn how to navigate our public lands.  In particular, we have learned how to find places where we can park for 2-3 weeks at a time.  That's the ideal situation, and when we do that we aren't driving of course.

But it is much more than just "not driving" that we strive for.  In those places we are surrounded by peace.  The deserts we love so much are peaceful and quiet, with the only sounds being those of nature.  It's not really that we are "just relaxing" or "on vacation" because over the course of the five months we actually work quite hard physically--harder than when we are home in fact.  But yet the overall experience is a tremendous sense of serenity. 

Once again we saw some incredible places, including several we had never been to.  And we saw some old friends, like Valley of the Gods and the Mojave Desert Preserve.  Two major events were being able to camp and hike with both Ian and Owen for part of the trip.  We got to share our life on the public lands experience with them.

Now we are home on Whidbey Island.  We will not live in the bed of a pickup again for seven months.  But our time in the bed of our pickup will be here before we know it.  Time flies when life is good.

We frequently remark on how our feeling about our experience on our public lands is captured well by a Pink Martini song Splendor in the Grass.  It is ironic that it was one of the very first songs we danced to when we were getting to know each other.  We didn't understand then how much it would capture our future lives together:

Going where the hills are green
And the cars are few and far
Days are full of splendor

And at night you can see the stars

Life's been moving oh so fast
I think we should take it slow
Rest our heads upon the grass
And listen to it grow