April 13th, 2016

Our Campsite at Joshua Tree

A Joshua Tree

It's well past time to finish up the vacation reflections, and to get back in the habit of posting here weekly. I'll put some pictures here of the trip, but if you want to see more I posted a lot to my Instagram (my username is @MorganBolt_Author). Let's start with Joshua Tree.

A truly unique area, Joshua Tree features an array of cacti, large granite boulders, and of course, Joshua Trees! What is perhaps most interesting about the Joshua Trees themselves is that they are closely related to yucca plants, and in fact start out looking much the same as a typical yucca, until they grow tall enough to split and branch off. We enjoyed the best campsite of our entire vacation there, and were able to hike a good bit on some of the dirt roads, as you can take dogs there. It was great to enjoy the relative solitude the park afforded. Overall a quiet, beautiful, and utterly unique place.

We stopped for a night in Las Vegas, only because the campsite where we planned on staying in the nearby mountains was completely full. On the whole it seemed rather small, though I guess I might be comparing it to New York City, which isn’t entirely fair. It also seemed to be, like any place, populated with entirely normal people living exceptionally normal lives; a good reminder that, no matter where people live, they’re all merely people.

Death Valley

Next came the heat and shockingly large crowds of Death Valley. The wildflowers had begun to decline since their peak a few days before we made it there, but there were still plenty of flowers around. Without them, I can only imagine how truly desolate the place must be. It got prettier—and the heat subsided—as the sun set, which helped. During the heat of the afternoon though it was easy to see how the park earned its name. It's the sort of place I am glad to have visited, but do not particularly need to visit again.

Sequoia

Sequoia, my new favorite national park, was our next stop, and I could go on and on about it, but I’ll resist that temptation. It rained the evening we arrived, which meant it snowed higher up (where the sequoias grow). We were grateful to have all-wheel drive, which meant they didn’t require us to have chains to travel the winding mountain road up to the sequoia groves. The pictures I took speak for themselves, so I won’t ramble about the impressive, almost unbelievable size of the trees, or the splendid palette of white, red, and green that the snow and sequoias teamed up to create. We enjoyed a wonderful ranger-led snowshoe tour, and had a splendid time exploring the forests and meadows there. Needless to say this is one park we hope to visit again.

Mother and Baby Sea Otter

San Francisco was our next stop, and there we picked up Christina’s sister who flew out to meet us on her spring break from teaching. We got Chinese food (I’m not sure what exactly, but it tasted amazing!) and ate with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. We made sure to drive Lombard Street too. Then we left to drive down the coast, stopping at the incredible Monterrey Bay Aquarium, where we saw sea lions and sea otters, including a mother and her pup. In the wild, from the observation deck at the aquarium! They had sea otters in the aquarium too, which are used as foster mothers for orphan pups, but seeing them in the wild was truly extraordinary. The wildlife viewing there alone is enough of a draw, even without the wonderful aquarium inside.

Elephant Seals

As we drove along the coastal highway, we kept an eye out for whales, as gray whales were supposed to be migrating north along the coast. Sure enough, not long after we started to look for them, I spotted a whale spout a few hundred feet out in the water. As we were perched well above the water on the edge of the mountains, we had a pretty good view, and throughout the day saw several mother and calf grey whales as well as a small pod of humpbacks, a couple dolphins, more sea otters, and a beach full of northern elephant seals. The spectacular scenery and abundance of wildlife were definitely a highlight of the trip, and the Big Sur area ranks among the neatest places I’ve been.

San Antonio

A couple stops at Six Flags parks along the way back (outside LA and in San Antonio) brought us to New Orleans, where we stopped briefly for beignets at Café du Monde, and finally on to Tallahassee, where we visited Christina’s parents briefly for Easter. Then a final long day of driving brought us back to Corning. In all, I drove over 9,000 miles, each one filled with memories we will cherish forever.

Faced with less-than ideal scan results, we decided to spend make an adventure out of last weekend, and went skiing and snowboarding (I do both) at Jay Peak in Vermont and Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondacks (New York). Both are mountains I have wanted to visit since I first heard of them, and they did not disappoint.

As I write this, I’m sitting in the Ronald McDonald House in New York, and will have surgery tomorrow to remove/biopsy some suspicious spots in my chest. We have no idea what the results of that surgery will be, or what comes next. It could be a week before we get the results and have an idea what comes next. For us, the unknown and uncertain nature of the future cannot be ignored. The only thing to do is really the only thing any of us can do in light of our mortality; live life to the fullest while we can, and not worry too much about tomorrow.