Greg and I are always talking about moving. I want to go yesterday. This is not practical for a number of reasons, as you can imagine. After 10 years together, Greg and I are pretty confident in our roles as the practical one and the dreamer. A long time ago I used to explain us this way: "I think up all the fun things we should do and Greg thinks up all the reasons why we shouldn't do them." Well, it's not that simple, really, and the truth is there's a little dreamer in both of us, and our long-standing mutual dream is to live in a little tiny place with some land with lots of pine trees on it.
So that was the plan....not much of a plan, really. Well, it is now. We are going to sell this house (our St. Paul place) hopefully within the next 12-18 months. We will buy a used truck/van/Aztec....something we can sleep in....not that I haven't slept in a Grand Am before, but because I have, I know that we'll want something roomier (although I still maintain that I am a more worldly traveler than Greg because I have spent the night in my sleeping bag in a Grand Am with my brother at a rest stop somewhere near Niagara Falls where we woke up when it started to rain on us through the window....not many have THAT particular experience on their life lists). Then we plan to spend the next several weeks tramping across the country....one last hurrah before we settle down for good up in the pines. It's a deal....we're really going to do it, and I can't wait!!!!
Even though it's a a long time away, I still can't help thinking about all the places I want to see. Places I haven't been to yet and places that I love and want to return to. Two weeks ago, Greg and I were spending the night at an Econolodge in Ogonquit, Maine, and it was a quite nice Econolodge, all decorated for the holidays and with the smell of the sea in the air, and I said to him, "think of all the nights we've spent with each other all over the country." So we did....we reminisced for a long time remembering nights in tents, not in tents under the stars (sometimes the rain clouds), in cheap motels, in fancy hotels, on the West Coast, on the East Coast, and all the places in between. Some of our favorite memories:
~our "skiing" vacation at Lutsen in the off season, where it snowed every day and there was nobody else there and we saw the best skiing conditions we will ever see in MN our whole lives yet we never made it on the slopes....
~almost sleepless night in a blizzard at a fleabag motel in Seligman, Arizona...on my 20th birthday, no less. We were young and ignorant of the fact that it ever snowed in Arizona....
~our first earthquake in Paso Robles, California....I thought it was wind that blew those boulders onto the highway - we don't have earthquakes in MN....
~spending an inordinate amount of time watching those baby turkeys one afternoon at Custer State Park in South Dakota....
~when the fox ate a hole in my big tent on Padre National Seashore in Texas....who left the Doritos in the tent, anyway?
~the hottest temperatures I hope I'll ever experience in Bismarck, ND coming home from Storyhill Fest....
~when Osky took off after a rabbit which immediately ran into a cockleburr bush in Kansas City, MO, and we spent the next 3 hours cutting cockleburrs out of his fur with a Leatherman. He's never looked so pathetic, and we still love to laugh over it....
~playing in the snow-like sand at White Sands National Monument in New Mexico....people actually go sandboarding now....i think we invented it there....
~this one time....I left my wedding rings in Gillette, Wyoming....and we didn't realize it until we were in Whitefish, Montana (which has to be at least 700 miles away)...and then Goldy (my Grand Am) broke down on the way back to Gillette....and I think it's a testament to our love that Greg didn't just fucking leave me in Gillette with the pronghorns to rot....
~hiking the Cracker Lake trail in Glacier National Park, MT where we saw those ENORMOUS bear prints in the mud on the trail, and it snowed at the top and rained all the way down and we were so cold and miserable in the tent that night at the campground where a sign warned of the possibility of death by grizzly bear mauling. But the next morning there was so much fresh snow and it was gorgeous....and we packed out and went over to the Great Northern Bar and Grill where my brother cooked us up some great fried food....
~total knock-down drag-out fight at 7am in the parking lot of an office complex in Fargo, ND on our way to Storyhill Fest. Pillows were thrown, insults were hurled (screamed), the car was turned around and headed for home, but somehow we made it there....and Chris and John sang "Happy Man" at the campfire that night and we decided never again to argue "the way we did tonight...."
~watching a Portland SeaDogs game in a lightning storm in Maine, and somehow falling back in love with baseball....
~seeing that sting ray while eating our anniversary dinner (ok, drinking our anniversary wine) in Santa Barbara, California....
~discovering the lobster roll that fun day in New Brunswick....
~making it home from San Diego in less than a 36 hours and making it to work the next morning (ok, 2 hours later)....
~watching CNN in shock in a Portland, OR SleepInn as we realized we couldn't even recognize our own town after a tornado tore through....
~Campsite E at Tettegouche....when I couldn't put down "Alive," and then Greg couldn't either....
~the sun rising at 4 am at Cobscook Bay State Park in Maine....
~waking up with that elk right outside the tent at Redwood NP, CA....
~way more...Grand Marias, Bear Head, Cascade River, Duluth, Freeport, Bar Harbor, Machias, Calais, Saint John's, Oskaloosa, Peabody, the BWCA, Orr, Bozeman, Missoula, Corvallis, Milton-Freewater, Rapid City, Dallas, Eureka, Yreka, San Francisco, Fresno, Cambira, Monterey, Inyo NF, Stanislaus NF, San Diego, and many more to come....I'm so excited!!!! (Some might say psychotic....)
