Saturday, July 02, 2011

We are Home

Yesterday afternoon we pulled into our driveway after 12 days on the road, covering some 3500 miles. We tried to remember the last road trip like this that we took. Maybe never. Shorter ones, for sure, but recently most of our traveling has been by air. Even more recently most of our travel has been non-existent. It has been a few years of holding down the fort at home and watching our finances. Spring rolled around—sort of—our old house finally sold, and it seemed like something we needed. We had plans to go to Santa Fe in the past and something else always came up and we didn't get there. So the new plan was a big loop through the west, with Santa Fe holding down the far end of the loop and whatever fell along that oval path going and coming back. Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, California—Oregon again.

I'm still unpacking, doing laundry, shuffling through the piles of stuff. I haven't even started going through my photos yet, but I did download the one above, taken in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California several days ago. I made Ray stop the car out in the middle of nowhere so I could take a picture of that vast expanse and those snow-capped mountains and that one moment of my life in June of 2011. We were on the last part of our trip, heading toward home. I was clicking through pictures in my mind and attempting to make sense of all we had seen. I always find that traveling opens up a part of my brain that looks for patterns and truths in the experience of new landscape. Proust said, "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

I'll be sharing some of those new landscapes and perhaps what I saw through new eyes in the coming weeks. Right now I am too tired. Happy we went. Happy to be home.


9 comments:

  1. Welcome home! Road trips are all about making memories.

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  2. What a great trip! This spring I made the trip from northeast Florida to California (for Empty Spools) and loved it so much that I'm doing it again next year. I blogged about the trip each day and will eventually have it printed as my scrapbook. Road trips are the best!! We are so fortunate to be the custodians of such a vast, diversely beautiful country!

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  3. Sounds like a wonderful trip. Looking forward to the photos

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  4. Anonymous6:07 AM

    Great to have you back!! Missed you.

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  5. Travel can be sooo exhausting and so exhilerating at the very same time. I think it creates new brain cells,or links or whatever happens up there.

    That is my absolute trip, that I have been wanting to do for over 30 years, but we have never gotten the amount of time to drive it. You are giving me determination.

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  6. So glad you are home safe and can now relax and now relive your trip from the comfort of your cozy home. I'm looking forward to seeing more pictures!

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  7. Welcome home! We made that trip a couple of times in another life when we ran rivers in our dory. The dory is gone, and our bones are tired, but the memories of those places remain. You saw some beautiful country, but there is nothing like sleeping in your own bed. Have a wonderful weekend and Fourth.

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  8. Welcome home! We were just in the Sierra Nevadas too and that scene is so familiar to me. My sister backpacks in the area all the time and she was practically rhapsodic as we drove through the area around Mono Lake.

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  9. It is always great to get back home after a trip no matter how great it was, "there is no place like home". I love Santa Fe and all that is around it. Thankfully you missed the fires that are out west. Can't wait until I see the pictures of the trip.

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