Wrapping Up 5 Days in the Desert
Jan. 1st, 2023 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalker5 Days in the Desert travelog #26
Back home - Wed, 28 Dec 2022, 11pm
We arrived home from our 5 Days in the Desert trip this evening at 10pm. It's been a long day. Though we took it a bit easy this morning, not checking out from the hotel until 9am, we then drove to Trona, hiked around at Trona Pinnacles, and completed the rest of the drive home after a late lunch in Ridgecrest, CA. We drove nearly 500 miles today in addition to the few hours we spent hiking.
Here are Five Things in retrospect about the trip:
1) Lots of driving. I knew at the outset we'd tally a lot of miles going back and forth between staying at a hotel in Barstow and driving out to the desert every day for hiking, but I hadn't thought hard about what it'd total up to. The answer is 1,784 miles. In 6 days.
2) Better driving than flying this week. Driving such long distances is tiring, even though I do handle it better than most people. "Why not fly so you can just sit back and relax?" some ask. This past week... Ha! Commercial aviation has been a trainwreck. Weather woes are tying up more than half the country, and the airline I fly most often, Southwest, has suffered an operation meltdown. They canceled 15,000 flights around Christmas, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded.
3) Last-minute buys at REI were useful. I was frustrated on Friday morning as we were packing to leave home that I would need to buy a couple of things: another pair of long-leg hiking pants (I had only one set) and a good flashlight (mine was dead with the battery compartment jammed shut). I was even more frustrated when lines at our local REI store moved so slowly. Oh, and the items were expensive: $80 for the pants, $25 for the flashlight, plus tax. Batteries were included, at least. Fortunately both turned out to be good buys. I needed the second pair of hiking trousers, and they worked better than their seemingly cheap material suggested. (Maybe the material only feels thin. I'll know their durability after another few months.) And the flashlight worked well in exploring caves.
4) We overpacked a little— but the preparation was good. In these trip retrospectives I always consider how close to optimal our packing was. Failing to bring things we need is a mistake, of course, but so is way overpacking. It takes up space and slows a traveler down. This trip I packed a few shirts and a pair of trousers I didn't need. They were street clothes. I packed them because I thought we might do non-hike-y stuff, but it turns out all we did was hiking, driving to & from hiking, getting meals after hiking when we didn't care about being dusty, and resting in the privacy of our hotel room. We also packed a bag of games we didn't play. Those were primarily a rainy day strategy (literally!). We thankfully didn't have too much in the way of rainy days to deal with; just a half day or so.
5) Unplugging from work. It's not really a vacation if you're still thinking about work... or worse, if you're still checking in on things/logging in to help out because you really can't unplug from the job. I succeeded in this regard. I not only stayed unplugged from work the whole time, I forgot about it. Seriously, I don't remember what I need to do first when I go back. That'll be my first order of business next Tuesday morning. 🤣 But between us we're 1-1 in this regard. While I unplugged from work on this trip, Hawk put in almost a full day worth of work spread across Mon-Wed this week.
Back home - Wed, 28 Dec 2022, 11pm
We arrived home from our 5 Days in the Desert trip this evening at 10pm. It's been a long day. Though we took it a bit easy this morning, not checking out from the hotel until 9am, we then drove to Trona, hiked around at Trona Pinnacles, and completed the rest of the drive home after a late lunch in Ridgecrest, CA. We drove nearly 500 miles today in addition to the few hours we spent hiking.
Here are Five Things in retrospect about the trip:
1) Lots of driving. I knew at the outset we'd tally a lot of miles going back and forth between staying at a hotel in Barstow and driving out to the desert every day for hiking, but I hadn't thought hard about what it'd total up to. The answer is 1,784 miles. In 6 days.
2) Better driving than flying this week. Driving such long distances is tiring, even though I do handle it better than most people. "Why not fly so you can just sit back and relax?" some ask. This past week... Ha! Commercial aviation has been a trainwreck. Weather woes are tying up more than half the country, and the airline I fly most often, Southwest, has suffered an operation meltdown. They canceled 15,000 flights around Christmas, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded.
3) Last-minute buys at REI were useful. I was frustrated on Friday morning as we were packing to leave home that I would need to buy a couple of things: another pair of long-leg hiking pants (I had only one set) and a good flashlight (mine was dead with the battery compartment jammed shut). I was even more frustrated when lines at our local REI store moved so slowly. Oh, and the items were expensive: $80 for the pants, $25 for the flashlight, plus tax. Batteries were included, at least. Fortunately both turned out to be good buys. I needed the second pair of hiking trousers, and they worked better than their seemingly cheap material suggested. (Maybe the material only feels thin. I'll know their durability after another few months.) And the flashlight worked well in exploring caves.
4) We overpacked a little— but the preparation was good. In these trip retrospectives I always consider how close to optimal our packing was. Failing to bring things we need is a mistake, of course, but so is way overpacking. It takes up space and slows a traveler down. This trip I packed a few shirts and a pair of trousers I didn't need. They were street clothes. I packed them because I thought we might do non-hike-y stuff, but it turns out all we did was hiking, driving to & from hiking, getting meals after hiking when we didn't care about being dusty, and resting in the privacy of our hotel room. We also packed a bag of games we didn't play. Those were primarily a rainy day strategy (literally!). We thankfully didn't have too much in the way of rainy days to deal with; just a half day or so.
5) Unplugging from work. It's not really a vacation if you're still thinking about work... or worse, if you're still checking in on things/logging in to help out because you really can't unplug from the job. I succeeded in this regard. I not only stayed unplugged from work the whole time, I forgot about it. Seriously, I don't remember what I need to do first when I go back. That'll be my first order of business next Tuesday morning. 🤣 But between us we're 1-1 in this regard. While I unplugged from work on this trip, Hawk put in almost a full day worth of work spread across Mon-Wed this week.
