#theprofessorgoeswest

It all started last November shortly after we miscarried our baby. The professor and I were finally getting to making and canning jam out of our frozen berries that we had picked in the summer, and trying to console ourselves in our loss. Then it suddenly occurred to us that we had a window in our childbearing years that allowed for the massive camping road trip that we had always talked about doing *someday*. (Now don't get me wrong...camping has never my favorite activity...but now that our trip is over I like it more than when we started. In fact thanks to the self-inflating Thermarest air mattress, I slept about how I normally do when not in my own bed.)

I said that I would be willing to do the trip if we broke it up by staying in hotels or with people we knew on the road. And that is when we really got planning. We were going to see 10 National Parks, several State Parks, and as many of the California Missions as we could fit into our schedule. We made it inside of 8 and saw 3 more from the outside. 

We had 11 nights camping, 4 in hotels, and 7 with friends (thank you sooooo much friends!).

The trip was amazing. The drives were long, but the views were so, so worth all of the effort of going there and back again. We made the drive more enjoyable by listening to The Lord of the Rings on audiobook, and we still have some left to finish out on a later road trip.

I will probably spend the rest of the summer writing up my thoughts from our road trip. In the meantime, head on over to my Instagram account to see all of the pictures I posted from our three weeks on the road.