Welcome to the new blog for The Roaming Gardeners! My blogging life has had a multi year hiatus, pretty much since New Zealand. We now have a new and improved website and I intend to update it on our adventures in traveling, gardening, and DIY home projects. I plan to also include some of travels that were never documented. I might as well start at the beginning.
Tony and I met in 2010 while both working in Yellowstone National Park. We spent the summer working at Old Faithful and camping, hiking, and fishing as much as we could. That fall we loaded up into my trusty Honda Civic and took a good long road trip. We literally drove 9,000 miles from Yellowstone, to the Oregon Coast, the Redwoods, Arches National Park, Mesa Verde National Park, and then across the country to Virginia, down to Key West Florida, and then back to Texas. We were gone about 6 weeks and saw some amazing things.
It rained so much in Oregon that we bailed on our camping trip and ended up renting a Yurt at the state park. It was a great thing to come by! It had heat and shelter so that we could hang our clothes out to dry and not be confined by our 2 man backpacking tent in the rain. It was still so lovely there, I hope I can make it back during some warmer weather months to explore the hiking trails and ocean views. After that we headed down to the Redwoods and got to stand among the giants. The immensity of the trees and age of the forest is difficult to put into woods. The soft green forest floor is towered by the giants trees that watch over it all. Since it was off season, we were able to enjoy the forest with very few other people, it was quite and overwhelming beautiful.
Onward we drove to Arches. This is a small but mighty national park with gorgeous rock formations and one of the most lovely sunsets I have still seen to this day. We camped on some BLM land nearby and it was warm by day, but cold at night. So cold that when we took the tent apart, the condensation on our tent poles froze in our hands. Luckily we had our camp stove to cook up some breakfast and warm up our hands a bit.
After leaving Utah we headed down to Mesa Verde. We were on track for a ranger led tour to the Spruce House, and since we were driving from Moab we were running late. Luckily we managed to get there in time to jog down the trail and meet up with the tour and learn some amazing history about the cliff dwellings that surrounded us. I would highly recommend a tour if the opportunity allows it. .
Eastward bound! We darted off to Virginia for an early Thanksgiving with Tony’s family. I had never been to the East coast during the fall, and even though we were past peak leaf season it was beautiful.. The Blue Ridge Mountains offer a vast rolling view of the cloud covered land that surrounds it, and although it was very different than the mountains I had spent 3 years hiking in Yellowstone, it was just as lovely in it’s own way. After eating too much food, we headed down to Florida to eat more food. We spent Thanksgiving in Florida and then headed down with Tony’s family for a family camping trip in the Keys. This was a much warmer atmosphere than the cold Oregon weather we had started with, despite the fact it was freezing in Miami for the first time in nearly 20 years. We had great fun fishing, kayaking, and eating even more food.
Finally our trip was coming to and end. We packed up the Honda Civic for the last leg of the trip to Texas. I grew up north of Austin and my mom still lived on property there. She had the perfect little spot for us to start building a cottage and start a different chapter in our lives.
