Dave & Meredith’s Travel Blog

We arrived in Boston early Thursday morning after a red-eye flight from Oakland, CA. Here are a few stats about our last 4 weeks on the road:

• We drove 4,500 miles. That’s equivalent to driving from Bangor, Maine to Miami, Florida and then to Los Angeles, California.
• We bought 170 gallons of gas. Yes, this was a big part of the budget.
• We visited a total of 12 National or State Parks in 5 states.
• We consumed a total of 20 gallons of water, 20 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, 8 ham and cheese sandwiches, 6 freeze-dried dinners, 6 quarts of yogurt, 1 gallon of apple juice, 3 boxes of cereal, 10 packs of oatmeal, 10 apples, and 8 bananas plus we ate one restaurant meal per day.
• We spent 14 and a half nights in our tent, 12 nights sleeping in real beds (4 unplanned), 1 and a half nights in our car, and 1 night on the plane.
• We visited 8 friends/family.
• We took 11 showers at hotels or friends’/family’s houses and 5 at campgrounds.
• We saved $120 buying an annual National Parks pass at the start of the trip.
• We posted 37 blog posts.
• We (mostly Dave) took 2317 photographs. It should have been higher but 75% of our days were cloudless (that may seem backwards to many people but cloudless days are dull photographically speaking).
• We bought 8 more tent pegs.
• We had one car wash including a vacuum.
• We visited two wine tastings.

Looking back over the last 4 weeks, the trip seemed to go much faster than our other month-long trips. It’s always a mixed bag coming home. On the one hand the trip is over which is a downer. The upside is having all of our conveniences again. There’s a bunch of “admin” to do such as unpack, pick up mail from the post office, restock the fridge, etc. but that’s not too bad. Getting to see friends again is always great of course. I have yet to post any photo galleries from the trip but I hope to in the next few days.

What’s next? I’m off on my last trip early Tuesday morning. I’m going on a photo workshop to Churchill, Canada to photograph polar bears and I’ll be back on the 17th (supposedly they have the InterWebs up there so stay tuned for more blogging). Meredith says it’s now time to work on her resume. That means it’s time for me as well when I get back. Apparently one has to eventually pay for all of the fun.

- Dave

This would be the place we would have included our view from our window while we stayed with our friends Sharon and Charla in the Bay Area.  Unfortunately, we forgot, again.  Sorry.  I feel like we let down our readers. 

Sharon and Charla moved from Boston to Alameda (an island in the east Bay) about a year and a half ago, and bought a beautiful old house which needed some TLC.  So far, they’ve completed renovation of the kitchen, where Charla whupped us up a mess of vittles every day (she is a great cook!).  Anyway, had we taken the picture, you would have seen their back yard, which features a lemon tree, an orange tree and an apple tree, as well as tomatoes.

We really chilled out while we were there (4 nights!), but we did manage to do a few things:

• Visited Sharon’s horse Red Hot at her stable in Walnut Creek to put metal flashing on the wooden fence so she would stop eating it.
• Went to a wine tasting at Rosenblum Cellars, a winemaker on Alameda that sources grapes from growers throughout California.
• Spent an afternoon in Monterey walking around Cannery Row and eating seafood.
• Visited the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose.  The woman who lived here believed that she needed to perpetually build her home to appease angry spirits (it’s hard to describe this place.  It is a Victorian mansion with 160 rooms, and it’s completely wacky).  The woman who built it was the widow of the Winchester gun guy, and was crazy.  Also, the guy who gave us our tour was like a cross between Barney Frank and Paul Lynde, which made the experience all the more interesting.
• Cleaned and dried out our tent!
• Watched the Pats-Colts game (wah wah wah waah).
• Had a yummy dinner with my high school friend Jenn and watched election night coverage at a party with her friends (Yay Obama, boo California Prop. 8.)

Here are a couple of pictures:

Charla (left) and Sharon sated on Monterey seafood

The four of us doing one of the things we do best

- Meredith