The Scribner….Eagle….Person has landed… I arrived unscathed for the most part; there was a casualty en route, but I’ll get to that later. Settling into a comfortable leather chair with my feet up for a few days in Kitsap Count(r)y is the current plan for at least a few days. My view includes the Hood Canal, the Olympic mountain range, and plenty of tall, pointy, and green pine/cedar trees…
While am still glad that I undertook this trip; I am glad that it’s over. 5 weeks of living of your car, sitting still for hours on end, sleeping in a different place almost every night, and endless hours of monotonous driving takes a toll on your patience.
Some Observations…
- Pace: I realized in the last week that throughout the duration of the trip I had felt pressured to not stay in one place to long. I’m not sure if this pressure came from a a perceived schedule, budget, or (most likely) my general restlessness. Overall I think it was instructive for me to see that happening and realize that it’s important to be mindful about when my need to move is forcing a decision or if I actually have a schedule to meet.
- Interactions: I realistically talked to dozens of people, but feel like I still didn’t talk to enough. Between people on trails, the occupants of campsites, hostels, hotels, restaurants, diners, bars, and breweries. I’m currently working on another post about this with more specifics.
The Casualty….Was my poor car. Somewhere in the middle of Kansas there was a large piece of aluminum scrap metal in the road. I attempted to swerve, but there was no missing it. I was honestly lucky that it didn’t take out a tire or electrics. Unfortunately it did take out a piece of my facia/bumper. I stopped at a local hardware store and applied a liberal amount of Gorilla glue, which seemed to hold until I reached Northern California. I’ll have to figure out what to do next…
Over the next week I’m going to spend as much time as possible writing down the stories and experiences from this trip while they’re still fresh in my memory. I honestly and truly wanted to write about them every day, but after hours of driving, or hiking, or just in general being run down….The last thing you feel like doing is spending hours editing photos and writing about them. This was my trip, my experience, my adventure; I wanted to do it my way and that included a reasonable amount of sleep.