from rscottjones

TFW your local brewery drops off a little care package before your heart procedure… How thoughtful! 🙏

Christmas tree? Nah, we live in the Sonoran Desert, so it’s Christmas Saguaro here in Arizona. 🌵 Ours is adorned with travel ornaments.

Express lane

Curious as to how we travel so often, even with the confines of a government job? I finally got around to writing about the various strategies we use to maximize our time off:

→ Our vacation time strategies

Waving hi near Sani Pass in Lesotho - from OTD during last year’s 100-day adventure

Let’s Beer - from OTD during last year’s 100-day adventure

Just a reminder that if you’re planning on visiting some US National Parks or federal fee-based public lands in 2026, it’s a great time to buy the 2025/2026 Annual Pass, which has a great photo design this year and covers you for all of 2026. REI sells them online with free delivery, as do others.

Jungle gym - from OTD during last year’s 100-day adventure.

If you’re interested in checking out some breweries and taprooms in your city, Pub Pass isn’t a bad way to get started. The passport book costs $25 ($21 right now) and gets you a 1¢ pour at 25 different locations around town, so it’s a good deal to check out some new-to-you places.

Giraffe party - OTD during last year’s 100-day adventure

If you know my wife and I at all, you know that we’re constantly scheming about upcoming trips. For us, it’s all about squeezing out as much vacation time as possible while maximizing as many trip opportunities as possible. We’re also closing in on Jen finishing her National Park Units quest, so that’s naturally become a more pressing priority as she works towards wrapping it up in 2027.

Here’s what we currently have on the books for 2026, with additional trips likely to be added.

Louisiana - Dec/Jan

We’re starting off the New Year in New Orleans. Right after I’m cleared for travel after my upcoming surgery, I’m driving over to New Orleans over the course of a few days, and picking up Jen from the airport on New Year’s Eve. We’ll skip the big party (I’ve done NYE in New Orleans once before, and that was enough for me) and will hit the World War II museum on New Year’s Day while everyone is sleeping off their hangover.

From there, we have a couple of national park units in Louisiana and Mississippi that we need to complete for Jen, as well as the Capitol building for me. We’ll explore some counties we haven’t been in that region, too. I’ll eventually drop Jen off at the airport in Dallas and make my own way back. If you live in Texas and want to meet up as I pass through, hop on my list (that goes for any of the below trips, too).

Costa Rica & Nicaragua - Jan

We have 10 days to explore Costa Rica, with a quick stop in neighboring Nicaragua, in January. I’m told that our itinerary includes lots of volcanoes and waterfalls.

El Salvador & Honduras - Feb

We’re now tackling this in February, after having to reschedule it from November 2025 due to the government shutdown. We have a number of full day tours booked, plus a couple unscheduled days to explore on our own. After this trip, I’ll just have Panama left to visit in Central America.

Anza-Borrego wildflowers - Mar

We’ve somehow missed out on our “annual” wildflower trip to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in Southern California for several years now, but are making it a point to go this year. We’re making this a group trip, so if you’re in the area in mid-March and want to join us, please get in contact.

Apache Lake kayaking - Mar

For years, I’ve planned on doing a late spring/early summer camping trip to Apache Lake, in part to mark it off Metro Phoenix kayaking quest. I’ve had my eye on some of the campsites that have their own little beach access, where we can lounge in chairs in the water and occasionally paddle around. Unfortunately, those sites are all first-come, first-served starting in April—the ideal month for such a weekend.

This year, the calendar aligns such that the last weekend in March is a 3-day weekend for Jen, and late enough in the month that the temps should work. It’s also the first year that I managed to think of it in time to reserve the best site just after it became available. The adjacent sites are FCFS, but I’m hoping to snag at least one of them for some other friends who may join us. If not, they can take one of the less fun sites and just hang out at our beach.

DMV National Parks - May

In May, we’re off to Washington DC, Virginia, and Maryland to mark off a bunch of national park units with a couple of close friends. This is the second such DC-area parks trips we will have done with them.

Big Lake - Jun

We’re joining some friends during their annual Big Lake group camping trip in June. Or at least we think we are; we’ve had sites reserved the last three years and had to cancel each time. So I guess we’ll see if we finally make it this time around. I’m excited to bring our folding ebikes up there and ride some of the forest roads. The campground is at 9000 ft in elevation, so it’ll be a welcomed reprieve from Phoenix temps.

Norway - Jun

We cancelled this trip last year when we managed to pull off our 100 Day Adventure. But it’s back on for this year, 2+ weeks of campervanning the coast of Norway. And, we’ve added in a visit to some Norway friends we met during our 100-day trip, which is a cool bonus. This is the trip I’m most excited for in 2026.

Isle Royale - Jul

A few of us are converging on Isle Royale National Park to celebrate the completion of a friend’s quest to visit all 63 “named” National Parks. Beyond the time on the island with the group, we’ll also tackle a few other park units in the area that Jen needs, hit a new ballpark for Jen’s MLB quest, and explore some new counties, too. I’ll be driving up from Phoenix, so I should be able to do some work on that front in Wisconsin and Iowa—two of the states I’m still below the 50% complete mark (my milestone goal for the quest).

Canadian Rockies - Aug/Sep

Another rescheduled trip from 2025, we’ll spend a couple weeks in the national parks of the Canadian Rockies—Banff, Jasper, Glacier, Kootenay, Yoho, Mt Revelstoke…the whole shebang, if we’re lucky. Campground reservations don’t open for several more weeks, but I’m hopeful we can snag a good assortment of sites.

This will be another trip where I drive our camping stuff up from Phoenix, pick up Jen at the airport, then drop her off later to fly home, and drive myself back. Our trip plan for 2025 had her flying into Calgary and flying out of Seattle two weeks later, but I don’t think we’ll devote the same amount of time given the calendar and other trip commitments. That’s fine, it’ll still give me a chance to finish off the remainder of the Wyoming counties and do some work in Montana, too.

A month overseas - Dec/Jan

We’ve been strategizing about how to spend a full month overseas from mid-December through mid-January, perhaps even as an annual sort of thing. The idea is to utilize all those holidays and also spread the time off over two pay periods and calendar years. It will also take advantage of the naturally slow time of the year, which is how we’ll be pitching it to the ol’ bosses. The larger chunk of time away will help reduce the number of long-haul flights, which are less fun to endure and also account for an outsized portion of trip expenses.

As far as a destination goes, we’re not sure yet—we still have to see if getting the time off is viable or not. But our first two thoughts were combining New Zealand—a trip we’ve postponed multiple times since covid—with some other destinations in that region (maybe Tasmania, French Polynesia, or something else), or just doing a bunch of countries in Southeast Asia. But time will tell if this initial idea pans out or not. If it doesn’t, we’ll shift to a 2+ week trip in December.

Other Trips

While we haven’t booked them yet, I expect that we’ll organize a number of other trips as well. Here are some of the other things we’re currently looking at:

Oregon Caves/Sáttítla Highlands

Oregon Caves is one of the last remaining national park units in the West that Jen needs, so we’ll make sure to grab it either this summer, or at worst, next summer. We’d try to pair this with visiting some nearby family and perhaps a day of rafting on the Rogue River, rounding out a long weekend for her. I’d drive our stuff up from Phoenix, grabbing Sáttítla Highlands, the last national monument I need to re-complete my Treasured Places quest, as well as wrapping up my last remaining California counties.

LA Angels

A quick weekend trip over to LA to catch an Angels game for Jen’s MLB Ballpark quest. I’m hoping we can swing south towards San Diego a bit and visit some friends and family that live out there on our way back.

Idaho/Montana

Jen needs two national park units near the Idaho/Montana border, and I want to explore a bit of the Idaho panhandle. This would be another long weekend trip where I drive our camping stuff north and pick up Jen from the airport, then drop her off a few days later and drive home.

Kansas City/Iowa

We had a surprisingly fun time on a cheap weekend exploring central Nebraska earlier this year, and had booked a similar trip that would focus on Iowa, with a stop in Kansas City. Unfortunately, it was another casualty of our summer of cancellations. The goal for this trip is to mark off Harry S Truman NHS in KC (an otherwise orphaned park unit that Jen needs), plus tackle a whole bunch of Iowa counties (currently, my least visited state in terms of my county quest).

Colorado

I miss traveling with two old backpacking friends, Jessica and Hannah, and this is an opportunity for the three of us to reconnect on a weekend trip. Jessica has been doing the nomadic van life thing for ages now, while Hannah still lives here in Phoenix. Similar to the drive-and-fly trips that Jen and I do, I’d drive Hannah’s stuff up north to Colorado, pick her up at an airport, and drive us to meet up with Jessica wherever she’s camped at that moment, then reverse it on the way home.

Salt Lake City

The primary goal here is to mark off Golden Spike and Timpanogos Cave, two national park units Jen still needs. We actually did this trip in June earlier this year, but unexpectedly ended up as far afield as Yellowstone and Grand Teton to visit two sets of friends. It was a fun audible to pull, but prevented us from getting the SLC-area parks done. So we need a repeat weekend up there to wrap those two units up. This will likely be another trip in which I drive our camping stuff up ahead of time and Jen flies in right after work. As you’ve probably noted fi you’ve read all the way to this point, that’s a major travel strategy for us.

Quick shout-out to @lmika for his great Postlist plugin for micro.blog.

I’m using it to display all the posts from my latest trip, in chronological order, on one single page. It’s fun to have them all in one place, easily scrollable by friends and family (hi mom!).

An elephant with a drinking problem - OTD during last year’s 100-day adventure.

Our first African wildlife - OTD during last year’s 100-day adventure.

This was our last flight on Southwest before their big policy changes. No more checking in exactly 24hrs prior, or lining up in numerical order, or eating mayonnaise directly from the jar while making creepy eye contact with every passing would-be seatmate in an attempt to keep the middle seat free.