Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Another Life Update (Northwestern Road Trip)

Hey, all! Hope everything is going well with you and yours and whatever else you're involved in.

My goodness - it's already September. 2015 flew by pretty quickly, I don't know about you. But just as I look towards the future with great optimism, so to do I look with the same optimism towards the final months of this year and the coming of '16.


So, here's what I've been up to since I last posted in February: I ended up quitting my part-time job at the Ralphs grocery store (believe me, I don't miss that one bit) because my parents (whom I'm still with) decided to travel the Pacific Northwestern coast. So after my two week's notice was fulfilled, we packed up our motor home and began our westward trek.


Our first technical stop was San Francisco, where we paid a visit to my older brother, who was settling into his new job at the international airport. It's always great seeing him, and we were glad that he was doing well and warming up to his job. The city itself was great as well: we traveled up and down the streets in rickety period trolleys, we drifted to the notorious Alcatraz prison in the middle of the bay, and we smelled all their was to smell at Fisherman's Wharf.

I personally made a stop at American Zoetrope and the cafe beneath the offices, so that was a plus for me. Sadly, Francis Ford Coppola was nowhere to be seen. And no, I did not go into City Lights Bookstores, although I regret not doing that.

We then moved on to Sonoma and Napa Valley. Being the amateur wine connoisseurs they are, my mother and father had to tour any and all vineyards we could. Sadly, since I was but one year under this country's legal drinking age (and still am, as of writing this), I had to skip the festivities.

After the Redwood Forest, the rest of Northern California just wasn't that impressive to me. It was a little too country for me; especially Arcata. But then again, SoCal just spoiled that for me.

. . .

Oregon was okay as well. Besides stopping off at the state aquarium, it was just another pass-through state, really.

. . .

Washington was as far west as we got. We had to see Seattle: the home of that city's most famous native son, Dr. Frasier Crane. We also saw the houseboats that were featured prominently in a scene from the 1993 romcom Sleepless in Seattle. Never actually saw the film (yet).

Then we ended up staying near Spokane, which decided to have a heat wave. But at least we had the pool to cool us off.

. . .

After crossing through the Northwest, we had to make our way to South Dakota. Long story short, as full-time RVers, this was the state where we arranged our permanent address to be (a ton of RVers choose South Dakota). So we had to stay there for a bit while we got driver's licenses and passports and whatnot.

. . .

Then we made our way down to the Southwest. Utah was a fun stop: to cross it off my bucket list, we visited the Golden Spike site, and they brought the historic steam locomotives out on the tracks (despite them being replicas, but pretty darn good replicas, at that).

We visited the beautiful Canyonlands and Bryce Canyon National Parks. There's nothing that beats natural beauty: the thousands upon thousands of pictures my mother took still couldn't do the site justice.

. . .

And then we finally wandered our way back into Southern California. Our home sweet home.

We ended up for a bit in San Diego until our old spot opened in Orange County. We arrived at our old haunt a week ago, and that's where we've been since.

. . .

Anyway, that's been the past four months in a nutshell. I gotta find myself another job, while I'm trying to get a freelance video editing service off the ground simultaneously, whilst also looking for crew jobs on commercials or small films. So that's been consuming my time, as of now.

I realize I haven't kept up as much as I should've, but a lot's been going on. But I plan to make it a goal to keep this site updated. Bear with me as I do.