Travel, Tragedy and Love When you wake up each morning, do you ever have that feeling that something is missing? Or that your life to this point hasn’t been what you’d planned? My adult life started I’d say when I was twenty two, down on my luck and apathetic toward everyone and everything I’d everContinue reading “A Year of Change”
Author Archives: The Wandering Toto
Jewels of the Plains
Nebraska National Forest encompasses an area in northwestern Nebraska that features a set of ridges and rocky hills covered in Ponderosa Pines known as the Pine Ridge Escarpment. When people think of the Great Plains they think of flatland, farms and fields stretching on like an ocean of tall grass or wheat wafting in theContinue reading “Jewels of the Plains”
A Canyon of Amphitheaters
You can see it from a distance, across a vast open valley at the tip top of what they call The Grand Staircase, a set of plateaus that rises in stepped chunks from a valley floor that starts where the northern bit of the Kaibab plateau ends. Below 4800 feet rising all the way toContinue reading “A Canyon of Amphitheaters”
A Desert Drive, A Night In The Forest
He Wanders To A Canyon So Grand This was a trip of “nothing prepares you for the majesty of (insert place)”. From Horseshoe Bend to the Vermillion Cliffs to the Kaibab Plateau and the Grand Canyon itself it seemed like every turn in the road brought me to yet another mesmerizing view in an astonishingContinue reading “A Desert Drive, A Night In The Forest”
Under A Painted Sky
The moon wasn’t full but it was god damned bright when my alarm went off at just after 4 in the morning. A drive to Moab the previous night and a bit south of there towards the Needles district of Canyonlands National Park found us sleeping in our cars on the side of a sandyContinue reading “Under A Painted Sky”
The Year of the National Park
As it sits, today is the third day in May, 2021. No special holiday commemorates today, nothing but a number on a calendar, nothing noteworthy about today just a rainy Monday in spring and yet I feel like this will be a Monday worth remembering. A day that will register in my mind as theContinue reading “The Year of the National Park”
A Steep Canyon, A Weekend Road Trip, Happiness Abound
A morning cup of joe, black liquid gold, helps us all feel up to snuff. We know where we are headed but we don’t know what the journey will entail, nor are we aware of the how the trip will end. To drive five hours to a place you’ve never been before and one youContinue reading “A Steep Canyon, A Weekend Road Trip, Happiness Abound”
An Angel of a Peak
Staring up at it from below as I finished setting up my tent, a wave of excitement and anticipation washed over me, here we were a five man crew, making camp a few miles away from the beast we would tackle the following morning. An evening of music and enjoying each other’s company in theseContinue reading “An Angel of a Peak”
30
I woke up pensive, trapped in a reflective string of memories of the years that had lead up to this point. I knew this day was coming and I told myself it would be another day just like every other one but there I was, locked into a train of thought careening through the pastContinue reading “30”
A Long Day
Unbridled fear, sheer terror, a level of scared I didn’t know existed enshrouded my brain and wouldn’t let go as I clung to the boulder perched on what felt like a three foot wide ledge above a thousand foot drop to imminent doom, getting pushed back by an almost constant eighty to ninety mile perContinue reading “A Long Day”
The Wandering Toto 