Hey, it’s Barscutchums.

Decided I would try something new and maybe record some short podcasty audio-type posts, just kind of updating you on things going on.

I’m currently on I-10 West in Southern California in a long traffic jam, 45-minute backup coming into the Palm Springs, Palm Desert area.

Headed off on a camping road trip, driving the new Grand Highlander Hybrid that we bought earlier this summer.

This is the first trip we’re taking where we’re actually tent camping, and I’m not trying to sleep in the vehicle, which is something we haven’t done in quite a while.

But we are—I’m headed up towards Sacramento, where Jen is going to fly in in a couple days.

I’ll probably stay tonight somewhere around Bakersfield or so, just in a hotel.

Had some original plans to drive up 395 up the Eastern Sierra and poke through Tioga Road, camp at Tuolumne, and then head over to Sacramento, but got a little bit delayed trying to get everything together and packed in the vehicle.

Quite a bit different packing into this vehicle than the Outback that I’ve been used to.

And we also have, like, a bunch of extra stuff now that we didn’t have before, most notably a huge-ass cooler, electric cooler.

We bought a Dometic and a battery to power it.

Been super happy having an electric cooler.

I think it’ll change the way that we travel, or the way that we eat while we travel.

But it also takes up a lot more space, and you have to kind of configure it right in the space.

And this vehicle is just quite a bit different than what I’m used to.

Got everything to fit, but it did take quite a while, and packing and unpacking a car in 111 degrees, or whatever it was in Phoenix today, was less than fun.

But so headed up to Sacramento.

After that, Jen and I will hit some California counties that we haven’t been to before.

A few things to see in those places.

Hopefully I’ll update you a little bit later.

One of the primary goals as we head north from Sacramento will be not only finishing those counties, which will finish off California for me, but I will also re-complete the treasured places quest, which is every national park unit, every national monument, no matter who manages it, and every national conservation area.

There’s one Forest Service national monument called Sattitla Highlands National Monument.

Not sure if I pronounced it correctly.

It’s in Northern California, kind of near Lava Beds, north of Lassen, and it was designated in the last week of the Biden administration.

I had at least two other trips planned to mark it off last year, last summer, but was unable to do either of them, unfortunately.

So we are doing them this year.

Jen, of course, needs that one as well.

She also needs Cascade-Siskiyou, which is near the California-Oregon border, a little bit to the northwest of this place.

So we’ll camp at a place called Medicine Lake in that new national monument.

And then we’ll head through Cascade-Siskiyou, and then we’ll camp near Cave Junction near Oregon Caves National Monument, which is a National Park Service site unit that Jen needs for her quest.

We have a cave tour already booked for the next morning.

Then we’ll make our way north through Oregon, and we are going to see our friends Carrie and Matt, who live just south of Portland.

Stay the night with them.

Next day, I’m going to meet up with a buddy from Macedonia, Brian, as we pass through Vancouver, Washington.

We’re going to head towards the coast.

There’s two random counties over there that we need to do.

Not a ton on our itinerary for those two places, but maybe we can find some fun stuff as we drive through.

Also going to hit Aberdeen, see some Kurt Cobain stuff, and make our way up to the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park, where we have a campground reservation.

Just one night there.

We’ll probably go hit the Olympic beaches before heading up to Sol Duc the following day.

And we have two nights of camping there.

That’s on kind of the northern side of Olympic National Park.

It’d be pretty cool to get back to Olympic.

It’s been more than two decades for me.

It was one of my favorite early national parks that I visited.

I think it was 2003 or so that I was there.

I guess I’d have to look it up.

But I’m excited to go back.

It’s been on my list for quite a while to return.

I have tried to— Make countless trips happen, and it could never just quite work.

And it’s kind of close enough that we never really prioritized it, so I’m happy we’re making it happen here.

After Olympic, we’re going to head towards Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound that has an affiliated unit for the National Park Parks, which is a memorial to the Japanese Americans that were interned during World War II.

Of course, we already have a—both Jen and I have already finished a Japanese internment camp quest.

We went to all ten, and we’ve been to a number of additional related sites since finishing that quest.

So this is kind of a related site for that as well.

And let’s see, from there, we are going to head to the city of Seattle.

Actually, we’re staying in Tacoma, but we’re spending the next day in Seattle.

Man, it took me forever to find a parking lot that I could prepay to park there for the day.

But we’re doing an underground tour in the morning, and then hopefully going to hit a brewery for lunch on our way to a Seattle Mariners game.

I have no idea who they are playing.

Doesn’t matter much to me, but Jen needs to mark off the ballpark, so that’s why we’re doing that.

And after that, Jen will be flying home.

And from there, I will, after dropping her off at the airport, I’m going to go camp at Mount Rainier.

I have a couple nights booked at Cougar Rock.

Campground, which is, I don’t know if I’ve stayed there before.

I’ve only been to Rainier one other time too, and that was a long time ago as well, 2001-ish.

So it should be fun to get back there as well.

I have the full day that I can explore again.

I’ll probably just stay on the south side of the park, but we’ll see how things shake out.

From there, I drive through Random County in Oregon that I need, just east of The Dalles.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the Columbia River Gorge.

My ex-wife’s family lived there in The Dalles, so surprised I didn’t get that county during any of our trips.

Maybe we did.

I just can’t remember.

I didn’t really keep track of that stuff back then.

So after that, I will head southeast to Boise, have some things to see along the way, and we’ll stay in a hotel in Boise.

Hope to hit a brewery or two.

I know Boise is known for a good brewery scene.

Last time I was there, I went to several that I enjoyed, but just looking on Untappd, man, they’re not really rated very well.

So hopefully I found one that I think will do.

So I will do that the following day.

I kind of start a much longer drive back to Phoenix, and I’ll camp in Bryce Canyon at the Sunset Campground on my way home, and then.

And then we’re back.

We’re back for a while.

We’ve been traveling just almost nonstop since February or so.

We’ve had about a three-week period here home since our Norway and Iowa Royal trips.

But it’s been just a lot of travel, so we’ll be home for most of the fall.

It’s football season, so that’s kind of standard course for us.

We are going to take a trip in November to Washington, D.C., hit a bunch of national park units for Jen, but also one for me because in late October, 24th, maybe 27th, I forget the date, somewhere around there, the Desert Storm National Memorial is being officially authorized and included in the National Park System.

They’re having a big celebration, and I need to go mark off what will be my 434th national park.

So we will do that in November.

And at the moment, that’s really all that we have on the calendar.

We have some ideas about things to do in January and February.

We’ll likely also have a larger December trip that we haven’t decided on because there’s a very interesting opportunity that we may be pursuing, travel opportunity we may be pursuing in January.

So hopefully I’ll have more information on that soon.

Anyway, I wasn’t sure exactly what this would turn out to be.

I kind of see these posts as maybe just quick updates.

You know, I don’t really spend that much time on corporate social media anymore, and so I know a lot of people don’t kind of know what I’m up to.

I definitely miss a lot of people, and I was trying to figure out a way that I could keep people caught up on what we’re doing without having to spend too much time on those platforms that I just really don’t like.

So, I thought this might be an option.

I am thinking that I will try to record some audio throughout this trip.

We’ll see if that happens.

I had also intended to do this in Norway, and I don’t think I recorded a single damn thing from that.

I certainly didn’t publish anything.

But I will be posting this on my microblog, which is rsjon.es, which is kind of my social media of today for me.

And let me know if this was fun, if it was tedious.

I didn’t expect to talk for this long, but of course I’m stuck in traffic, so what the hell else am I going to do?

Anyway, you can apparently subscribe to this feed in your podcast player of choice, which is maybe a fun way to kind of distribute some personal updates.

And lastly, I should say that this episode is sponsored by nobody.

I’m never going to have sponsors.

It’s just me talking.

But anyway, there you go.

Thanks for listening.

Shoot me a message.

I miss you.