I love, love, love this picture. Not so much for the photograph itself (which is kind of plain), but for the sentiment. It's from the desert just outside of Joshua Tree National Park, near the town of Twenty Nine Palms, CA and, to be fair, it really isn't the end of the world. We've seen much more remote spots on our journey. I think the desert just always makes you feel that way. As if it were a real-life preview of an upcoming, post-apocalyptic, climate change world.
Yet especially this spring, the desert is far from dreary. The blues, reds, oranges, yellows, and purples are EVERYWHERE. In fact, in many places, the desert is downright lush. I'm sure the middle of July will feel much more "post-apocalyptic" when the temps are above 110°, but for now the desert felt to us like a spectacular "Welcome Home!"
Highlights for the last leg of the trip were:
The Mojave Desert - Great hiking (flat!) and a spectacular boondocking site, parked on a dirt road out in the middle of the desert.
Joshua Tree National park, CA - Josh is always a special place to visit. Randy's been a number of times with school trips rock climbing, but never has it been so beautiful.
Borrego Springs, CA - A quick stop, but a really really lovely drive through this part of the desert and the hills around San Diego.
Visiting Friends and Family all up the coast - San Diego, San Juan Capistrano, Newport, Redondo, and Bakersfield . . . before one LAST night at a Walmart in Merced before heading home! :-)
Las Vegas, NV and California again!
We had some fun April activities back in California, so it provided a good excuse for a short "time out". Mainly, we wanted to surprise our good friend Glen on his 60th (which, btw, is the new 30, but wiser . . . though he DID manage to see through our disguises :-). Also, Randy's running group had a "post Covid" 🤞🏾 celebration in Stinson Beach that provided a great way to reconnect with so many people.
As a result, we stopped in Las Vegas and got Doris a good wash job, had drinks at the Top Golf, and headed home for a quick visit.
Back on the Road: So much beautiful Desert!
The SuperBloom made our last few weeks on the road the extra special icing on the cake of our year. Again, we got to camp in some spectacular "dispersed camping" spots. If you're not familiar with this expression, we've grown to love it. These are places where you're allowed to camp on (mostly) federal lands, but there are really NO facilities at all. It's just a dirt road with a little parking spot. As a result though, we got in some Fabulous hiking and Serious flower oogling. Good Ole California did us up well!
First, the Mojave Desert . . .
Then, Joshua Tree . . .
And lastly, Borrego Springs . . .
The highway home: San Diego to Menlo Park
From the desert we popped over the hills to the San Diego area and it was only then that all of California started flooding back to us -- both literally and figuratively. A few quick observations as we "re-introduced" ourselves to our home state.
In CA there is still great public art, but sometimes it's under an overpass to brighten up a homeless refuge. People take their dogs with them to chill in the coffee shops. And, well, there are freeways like nowhere else in the state. . . . No, really the freeways are busy as heck, but they aren't as clogged as Atlanta and don't suffer from all the construction chaos of Austin or Dallas. Like so much in California, they SEEM messed up, but by comparison they work strangely well. Go figure.
Somethings were just the same as on the road. Joan still took pictures of every fabulous flower, even if it was in a parking lot. I used portrait mode wherever I could, even on a donut. And afternoon naps were still a highlight of every day. :-)
In what was a bit of a microcosm of our whole trip, we stopped to visit all kinds of people . . . and everyone welcomed us with open arms. Even the ones who'd seen us 6 months earlier on the opposite coast (Thanks to Robie and Craig & Alison). We got to celebrate a birthday (Ryan) and a baby shower (Lauren & Zack), play a little golf,see a mission (which we definitely had a new perspective on after the trip), and see a Trump resort (The guy seems to be everywhere!).
As usual, there were plenty of beautiful and serene moments. And we realized (like Dorothy) that we didn't need to travel far from home just to find the things we loved in the world. There is SO much beauty and grace here in our own backyard. All we need to do is to keep our "sabbatical" glasses on -- perhaps being awake to the wonder around us is sometimes all we need to do to find what we really need out of life.
Thought for the Day: Why "Journeys with Joan"?
One of the first things I noticed when Joan & I met one another is that we really enjoyed just being with one another. I remember sitting for an hour, on the floor by her front door, just talking and laughing, simply because the chairs didn't seem all that necessary.
It turned out that Joan is absolutely world-class at inhabiting a moment. In fact, I've never been able to get her to understand what athletes call "being in the zone" . . . because she can't imagine the opposite. Sometimes I think she simply doesn't see the difficulties, worries, or distractions that hold the rest of us back. I mean, I know she actually does, but maybe she just thinks of them as irrelevant?
My talent? I've just learned to follow her lead.
Usually it's when Joan's doing something that drives me nuts, that's when I know I need to slow down. Just because it's unusual or seems crazy doesn't mean it won't be worth doing. Like when she decided that we should make 150 Holiday cards BY HAND --enameling each card for 30 seconds over the open flame on our stove. I thought, Why on earth would we want to do that? With 2 toddlers in the house, full time jobs, and the Christmas season upon us we had MORE than enough on our plates but I followed along. It took for-freakin-ever to make them all, but we laughed SO much. Some of them burned and some were an unsightly mess of color blobs, but it was a ton of fun and we probably remember that moment every Christmas. (when we order cards made by someone else :-).
Joan can pull off dinner party logistics at the last moment, find a "perfectly good suitcase" in someone else's trash, or take 30 minutes to pick up a Starbucks because she got talking to a guy named Barry . . .
" He is a Shitsu breeder because puppies cost too much these days. Also he's a football fan and he's angry that the Raiders moved to Vegas and ALSO I found out that he has a high A1-c and he's really struggling to manage his blood sugar."
. . . Sometimes it seems like she lives in a different world with fewer worries, more interesting people, and a never-ending stream of sparkly moments.
So "Journeys with Joan" was a decent title not just because of the catchy alliteration, but because it also captured my own, private hope that we could both more fully inhabit what I think of as "Joan's beautiful world". Especially after years of Covid fears and Trumpian anger, life had started taking on a the stark, monochrome character of a Dorothea Lange foto. I think we'd all hoped for something more in our 60's.
Journeys with Joan was about giving ourselves a license to explore. The freedom to follow your curiosity is incredibly exhilarating. It gives life color, character, and heft. Each day was a practice in looking at the world with wonder -- searching for beauty and people and food and experiences, but always just staying in the moment. And then we'd get back into Doris and spend an hour driving and chatting about what just happened. Day after day I got to explore the world like a tourist, led my expert guide, favorite person, and beautiful bride. Time became an unending stream of ordinary moments becoming extraordinary. What stands out in my mind are not the guide book stops. Instead it's the smell of the local bakery, the taste of the barbeque, the stories from the maintenance guy, the image of the dressmaker, the splendor of the Catholic church, the beauty of the roadside hike ("hey, there's a trail there. Stop!") and many more.
"Sure, the building might look like a dump, but I bet the burritos are amazing."
A Journey with Joan is like the best part of being a tourist. All I had to do was make sure the van worked and that we could find a place to park for the night. She handled the important stuff.
And after a year on the road together, we laugh more. That's for sure, but also we talk differently. We relax more. Nap more. Drink more. I take more pictures and have more conversations. (If you've ever spent time with Joan you know that's what it's all about.) Conversations, I've learned, are really the touchstones of life. Because what's more fun or memorable for a tourist than stopping to meet someone?
When Joan's parents first met, her dad was on the verge of leaving for WW2 yet he knew what he had found in Beverly, so he proposed right away. Taken aback by the swiftness of the proposal Bev said "I'll think about it if you write me while you're gone". So he wrote her. He wrote EVERY single day while he was on duty in the Pacific. 50 years later the letters were bound up in an amazing book for their anniversary.
I can't measure up to that standard, but I suppose this trip is the love letter I never figured out how to write. I thank my lucky stars every single day for Joan. She makes me better. She makes me whole. She makes life wonderful and sparkly and fun. I hope that comes through in all these pictures and words. A "Journey with Joan" is something everyone should be so lucky to have in their life.
Coming home hasn't been simple. Our bodies want to slip right back into the rhythms and habits we left, but we're different people now. We're tourists. We're both more "Joan".
. . . I'm still not very good at napping, But now that we're home at least Joan has company again. :-)
Thanks for listening. ❤️❤️
THANK YOU for sharing this wonderful journey with all of us. We love you both. ❤️