Holy cow. The past month has been such a whirlwind and these last couple weeks even more so. Tango and I left Louisville two weeks ago, today. Here’s what the first part of this huge trip entailed:

First stop: St. Louis

My Aunt Nancy lives in St. Louis and although it’s only 4+ hours away from Louisville it made for the perfect first day stop. I was absolutely shattered when I drove away from Louisville. I had about 5 days in a row of less than 5 hours of sleep prepping to leave. I had to be up early to get my last class in with my bootcampers, run last-minute errands, and load the car to be out of town early enough to miss rush-hour traffic in St. Louis. The morning was just manic. About two hours into my drive I think the adrenaline finally wore off, my emotions were just there, and I had a big cry. It had been raining throughout the morning, but right after I had my cry, the clouds literally parted and it was blue sky all the way to Missouri. I got a quick nap in as soon as I arrived and then spent the evening with my Aunt hanging on her back patio with Thai food. I slept about 10 hours that night then the 3 of us did a short, morning run through the neighborhood before we hit the road.

Contents of my car: Tango’s Kennel (which takes up the most space), Yeti Cooler, two suitcases (the big one for shoes and outerwear for the cold places, the smaller one for the overnight stuff), my backpack, my workout gear, and my car emergency bag. See? Totes prepped for anything.

Second Stop: Western Oklahoma 

I wanted to camp a majority of this trip. First, to get to sleep outside. It’s therapeutic. Second, to save money. It’s gonna be a long two and a half months of very little income so I need to make my money last. I wanted this day to be my longest driving time but to still stay around only 8 hours, for both my sanity and my dog’s. We made it to Foss State Park in Oklahoma around 7:30 that night, pitched the tent and caught the best sunset with hardly anybody around. Although it was SUPER muddy (good thing I didn’t get Tango’s bath before we left) we did a bunch of running, jumping, and dancing around to get out some energy before bedtime.

Third Stop: Albuquerque

The great thing about being on East Coast Time and traveling west is that even with 10 hours of sleep, you can still wake up super early. We were wide awake at 6am so we packed it up and hit the road. We were in Albuquerque by 1:30 pm. After a quick stop at REI for a new tent (our old one had started leaking so we decided it was time to replace it) we set out to find mexican food and a nap. We decided to check out the National Petroglyph Monument park and arrived about 45 minutes before closing time. We decided (Tango and I have lots of discussions) to do the quick 2 mile loop to check out some petroglyphs. We would walk the trail on the way in and jog on the way out. We saw a few petroglyphs, pretended to see a few others, about died trying to jog in sand at that altitude, and called it a day.

According to the sign, there was a petroglyph of some sort of deer or other 4-legged animal “straight ahead and halfway up this hill.” We looked for a few minutes and decided to move on.

Fourth Stop: Sedona, Arizona.

This day’s drive was the best. It was pretty short, only about 5 hours or so, and absolutely beautiful. We camped at the Pine Flat campground in Coconino National Forest, where I’d made a reservation a week in advance. There’s a bigger campground called Cave Springs about a mile up the road, but the reserved spots were all taken when I went online. There were other sites that were first come, first served, but I decided not to chance it being full and reserved at Pine Flat. The entire place is gorgeous! We set up camp and had intended to do a hike but clouds moved in and it got a little chilly so we took a nap instead. When we got up we did a big drive around to check things out and then fell asleep around 7:30 that night. The night was a little cold so I got up at about 3 am to get some heat packs out of my car to stuff in my sleeping bag. The sky that night was SO amazing. Stars everywhere. Millions of them. I literally said, “wow” when I stood up out of my tent. Again, I slept about 11 hours that night, but woke up feeling like a million bucks. I thought about spending the day there wandering around, but I was really excited to get to San Diego so we left. I made a mental note though to do a weekend trip back there since it’s only about a 7 hour drive from SD.

Finally: San Diego! 

The first thing we did once we got in town was get an oil change… because responsibilities. My good friend Brenna was kind enough to let us crash at her place. We had an awesome evening catching up in her backyard and at dinner. I got to shower up and in the morning, we set out to get settled in SD: setting up an account at our old bank, getting a P.O. Box for the next couple months’ mail, and getting to chill at the DMV for a few hours getting my car registered… all the fun stuff. After teaching a few classes at Barry’s Bootcamp we got to set up camp at the San Elijo State Beach Campgrounds for a couple nights in Cardiff by the Sea.

First meal back: Fish tacos! It had to be done.

I had to leave the next day for a 6 day training with my TRX crew up in San Fran and just got back to move my stuff into storage. I’ve got to head out again tomorrow morning to teach a couple TRX courses a few states away. Things have been absolutely non-stop since I left, but I’m house sitting today and had some wifi so I wanted to show everybody what I’ve been up to. When I get back on Monday morning I’ll be work-free for a couple weeks so things will finally slow down. Hopefully I’ll be able to post more in a couple days! Holla!