Roadtrip Recap

We're safely back in PA, and I've procrastinated from blogging for long enough.

The roadtrip was amazing. Seriously an incredible time of leaving obligations, communication, and showers behind. I wish I could cover it all here, but I can't, so why try? A few fun highlights:

- Glacier. Perhaps the most beautiful place in America. Pristine. Get there before the glaciers disappear (ie: soon).

- Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Not only is the name awesome, but it's a 2,000 ft. sheer canyon of black rocks down to a sweet river (the River of the Gunnison, that is). And hardly anyone knows about it. So it was pretty empty. And they let you scramble down to the bottom (the Bottom of the Gunnison). But there's not a "path", there's a "route" or, as we started to realize, something more like an idea of a place where you might possibly be able to make it to the bottom and back up without dying. Sort of. (Adding 'of the Gunnison' makes everything cooler... of the Gunnison).

- The Pirates are cool. The Pittsburgh Pirates. Or, well, maybe not cool, but iconic. Let me explain. In Chicago I saw a high school emo kid wearing none other than a Pirates baseball hat. A Pirates hat in Cubs territory? But then I thought, and joked, "well, they've been losers for 17 years, and apparently he has been too." But then we kept seeing them. Pirates have become a symbol for emo kids across America. Who knew?

- Europeans love America more than we do. They must've outnumbered the natives by 2:1 at most of the National Parks, and probably 10:1 at some. Forget the fact that gas prices are insanely high or that the Euro is doing well against the dollar. The French are just plain more patriotic than we are.

- Meeting old friends on the road is an incredible blessing. Props to Jen, Keith, Kyle, Matt, and Ryan (and Mike and Shannon, Kelly's friends) for providing us with tours, fun, food, showers, and places to sleep.

- There are a lot of hard questions out there. Kelly and I debated the trade-offs between conservation and access over and over as we saw parks go one way (Yosemite: way too many people overrunning not enough space and trampling on a natural wonder) or the other (Kings Canyon: the 2nd largest roadless wilderness in the US, which one can barely see without a multi-day overnight backpacking trip). We much preferred the latter, but frankly got the best experiences out of the parks able to balance the two (Glacier, Joshua Tree, and perhaps Yellowstone).

- A sense of wonder is important. God made an incredibly awesome beautiful stunning world. Those creations point towards His majesty and glory. Sometimes it's important to just say "wow" and admire.

- I continue to be amazed that God never seems to do what I expect. Or in this case, focus on, teach me, or talk about what I expected.

- We're incredibly lucky. (I might have said 'blessed' but we'll stick with Kelly's word). Not a lot of people have a brother or sister that they could spend a month on the road with and enjoy utterly. Perhaps not many have one they could spend a month with anywhere and not kill. We, at least, didn't run into another sibling pair anywhere along the way. And we were continually and humorously mistaken for a couple repeatedly. But honestly, I have an amazing sister. Despite the fact that we are very different and disagree about a lot of things, we love each other intently and continue to get along.

- There's just too much to do. A month is nowhere near enough time. We would have gladly stayed a week or two at most of the places. We didn't even get to many places that were within hours. Several things got added to the 'list of things to do before I die'.

- I highly recommend it. Go see some things. Go do something different. It's not really hard (we knew practically nothing). And it's not even that expensive. We did it quite cheaply (eating lots of peanut butter and camping almost continually)... but could have done it for even less (sleeping in the car instead of paying for camping, etc.) Take your favorite person (or people) and go. I can't wait to do it the next time.