Summer 2011: An Epic Saga -- Episode 2, "Back to California"

Hey now, Philly, you street city

Been down by the railroad track

I know you can be a sweet city

But I won't soon be back

Haystack towns and smokestack cities

Are nothin' I want to see

My own house on high ground

Is the only place I want to be

So won't you carry me back to California

I've been on the road too long

Take me to the West Coast, daddy

And let me be where I belong

—Carole King

We drove from Provo to San Francisco to stay a couple days with Forrest and Naomi.  They were excellent hosts.  They shared their studio apartment with us (See?  Excellent.), showed us around their neighborhood, and Naomi told us the whole history of wine over an amazing homemade dinner.  Forrest makes the best food.  And he has the best girlfriend. 

The four of us went for a bike ride around the city.  Phil and I were going to rent bikes, and we decided to go with the tandem, because, hey—fun, right?  Only maybe the hills of San Francisco weren't the best testing grounds.  Needless to say, we had a little trouble keeping up with Forrest and Naomi on account of their regular, one-person bikes and bulging thigh muscles.  There probably isn't a better test of a relationship than riding a tandem up a steep hill in traffic.  It was a little touch and go there for a while, but we pulled through.

I don't know what Phil's whining about; I had an okay time.  My only complaint was that there was no one to feed me grapes and fan me with a large palm leaf. 

My Uncle David and his girlfriend Erin met up with us on our ride, and we convinced them to come up to my grandparents' house a few days later so we could all be there together. 

Alcatraz.  We would have gone, but it's apparently as hard to get into as it is to get out of.

My dad has been fishing out of San Francisco this summer, so we got to spend time with him and one of my favorite little doggies in the world, Bobbie.  We hung out on the Migrant, and Dad shared his fresh oysters with us (one of my favorite things, but not Phil's—more for me!).

Skipper and deckhand.

Our next stop was Healdsburg, where my dad's parents live.  Dad couldn't fish for a while, so he decided to come with us.  It was a struggle, but we piled all of our stuff back into the car, then stuffed my dad and his things into the backseat, and Bobbie rode on the floor at my feet.  


It was so wonderful to see my grandparents—we hadn't seen them since Phil and I got married in 2008.  We went for walks (Nana still leaves me in the dust), made lemonade and lemon bars from my Nana's homegrown Meyer lemons, and Nana and Grandpa took us out to Francis Ford Coppola's winery for a really scrumptious lunch.

When David and Erin got there, we took a long walk through the awesome cemetery behind Nana and Grandpa's house—lots of sunken graves and wooden markers and the like.  We also did a lot of this:

Erin was so much fun that we made her promise to come up to Brookings so we could all be there together (again).  She's really funny and she wrote a book about moving to Costa Rica (for which David took a lot of the pictures), and she even made a Costa Rica iphone app.  She's famous, and we like her very much.

Phil, my dad and I went canoeing up and then down a short stretch of the Russian River.  Bobbie did not like the kayak.  And, again, I could really have used some fresh fruit and fanning.  

Another highlight—Phil's first bingo!  Seriously.

It was a really full, really enjoyable visit, and we were sad to leave.  


But we did, anyway.  We (Philip, Dad, Bobbie, and I) piled back into the car and drove a couple more hours up to The Middle of Nowhere, CA, where Kevin and Becky live.  They are friends of my parents' from way back when (like, when my parents used to hang out together, or something—weird!), and they fed us the most delicious salmon.  Sorry if you wanted it; we ate the most delicious one. 

They also took us on a pretty hike through their wilderness and shared their wood-fired hot tub with us.  They've carved out a nice little spot in a picturesque part of California, and they manage to live off of solar and homemade hydro power.  I wish I could be more like them.

After Kevin and Becky's, we (just Phil and I, now) headed up the coast to Brookings, stopping only once so Philip could see some Roosevelt Elk.

We didn't get to stop to say hi to the redwoods.  I miss them.

I'm not even done writing about our trip, yet.

Summer 2011: An Epic Saga -- Episode 1, Hitting the Road

(In case you missed it, check out the Prologue for a brief introduction and a map of our trip.)


We struck out from Narberth early on May 25.  We wouldn't see our apartment again for two months!  We sobbed quietly on the road to Manna's.  No, we didn't.  


We made excellent time to Kentucky and got there in time for dinner (I always love going to Matt and Anna's house, because I know I'll have really good food to eat).  It's been great living so (relatively) close to them these past few years, because it's meant we've gotten to watch Miles and Mia grow.  We just love those kids.  Here are some of the things we did with them:

 We saw some sharks!

 We petted some sharks!

We went to the races!  (See, you can see a horse's rear end)

We only had a few days at Manna's before we had to hit the road, but we knew we'd see them again at the end of the summer.  


Our route to Utah took us through Kansas, which looks like this:

Please, no.  No more.

But we also saw some pretty things on the way, like this:

Still, we didn't get really excited until we saw this:

It's the Rockies!

We got to spend two excellent weeks with Phil's family in Utah.  I hid in the basement under a pile of books much of the time, while Phil roughed up his city-boy hands getting the deck ready for Kristina's wedding.  We managed to fit in some fun things, too—we spent a lot of time hiking and driving through the mountains with the newest member of the family, Daisy, and we enjoyed plenty of classic Nibley cuisine.

Good dog.

Nibleys don't mess around when it comes to carrot cake.

The highlight, though, was definitely our four-day Capitol Reef camping trip.  

This was our first time camping since our honeymoon three years ago.  Three years is too long to not sleep outside at all.  Phil and I drove down there to spend one night on our own, and Paul, Bronia, Dave, Alex, Andie and Avery joined us for two more nights.  We spent our first day on a short hike through Grand Wash.  It is a narrow canyon with sandstone cliffs up to 500 feet high.  It was an excellent start.

We couldn't get a site in the national park for the first night, so we found a little spot next to a creek out on BLM land.  There's not much wood around that area on account of it being a giant desert, but there were plenty of cow pies.  I had heard somewhere that those burn pretty well, so we tried it out, and what do you know?  It works.  Just don't stand in the smoke; it smells like burning cow pies.

Poo fire. 

The next morning, we grabbed a campsite at Fruita and then hiked Burro Wash on Matt's expert recommendation.  The distance was nothing crazy—maybe 8 miles round trip—but there was enough wading, climbing, and shimmying to make it a full-body workout.  The slot canyons were stunning and super fun to squeeze through.  It was an extremely rewarding hike overall, and we can add our hearty recommendation to Matt's.

 Phil barely made it through.  Fatso.

 I caught a frog!  Those are Phil's hands, though; not mine.  Thankfully.

 After watching 127 Hours at Manna's house, the chockstones made me a bit nervous, but we made it out without cutting off a single limb.

We returned to our campsite safe and sound, made a lasagna in the dutch oven, and then stared at it hungrily until the rest of our party arrived.  

The lasagna was tasty, but it was no match for Paul's over-the-top breakfasts.  Pancakes with berries and cream taste even better when camping.

The best part of our camping trip was definitely having these sweet, funny girls along.  

They did great hiking and playing in the dirt, but they LOVED shooting Paul's .22.

Adorable.

Phil and I took the scenic route back to Provo.

Phil loves scenery so much.

Thanks for the fire, little buddy!

Pretty soon after returning to Chateau Nibley, we had to cram our car full again and leave for the next leg of our journey.  I'll write about that next.

Summer 2011: An Epic Saga -- Prologue

This summer, we took a trip.

Between my job and Phil's school, we knew this would be our last chance for a long while to do any extended traveling, so we decided to make the most of it* by seeing all** of our favorite people and places in one go.  This is what we came up with:

10,466 miles.  372 gallons of gas.  68 days.  16 states.  2 countries.  1 epic journey. 

Here we go!


*The Pennsylvania Bar Exam was July 26 and 27, so "making the most of our summer" had to fit around my study schedule.  I studied about 6–8 hours a day; sometimes more, sometimes less.  I studied in the car, in our tent, on the river bar, and holed up in bedrooms and basements across the country.  I'm going to leave most of that out of the blog, because (a) it's boring and you don't want to read about it; and (b) it's boring and I don't want to read about it.  But just for the record:  I did study for the bar exam.  A lot.


**We missed some of you.  And we really did miss you.