February 14 – March 4, 2018.
It has been over 6 years since we began our journey. Six years of traveling, house sitting, repairing and improving Blue Wing, outfitting and improving Ballena Blanca, starting adventures and having to turn back, engine trouble, sailing across the Gulf Stream, island hopping, learning, coming back to and leaving Cabbagetown, and visiting friends, parks, deserts, and different countries. And six years of writing this blog.
In the sailing years we did a fair job of keeping up with the blog. Sailing is a lazy pace and oftentimes is spent waiting for the right conditions or hiding from the wrong conditions with nothing much else to do. And when you do finally get to sail and anchor in some stunningly beautiful place, frequently it is not that much different from the last stunningly beautiful place you dropped the hook. In contrast, traveling on land can be an exhausting pace. Every dot on the map has a story to tell about history, natural wonders, oddities, and culture. And we have a hard time passing any of it up.
Last winter we traveled for four months through 16 states, spending significant time in four of them. We visited 25 National Parks/Monuments/Recreation Areas, as well as many state parks, BLM recreation sites and monuments, and roadside attractions. We were on the move almost every single day which left little time for writing the blog.
It would be very easy to just let the blog die like so many others that lay dormant across the world wide web. But we love Make Like An Apeman. It not only records out travels (we actually have a hand written log for that), but lets us reflect on where we’ve been and learn more about each place. We also love the idea of writing for an audience. We hope we are entertaining for all our friends and regular readers and that we have helpful information for other travelers. And we love comments, but hope that no one feels like they need to leave a comment on every post just to feed our fragile egos.
So….. after we left the dentist in Los Algodones, we decided to just take some time and work on Make Like An Apeman. We headed to Borrego Springs and Anza-Borrego California State Park. We had visited this stunningly beautiful area last year and I thought it would be a great place to just chill for a while. We hung around and traveled in the the area for about 2 1/2 weeks, catching up the blog, taking care of some business, waiting for an order from Amazon, and planning our next adventure to write about – Mexico.
* All pics are click to enlarge.
I love reading your posts because I really learn about how this lifestyle and travel can give such joy. We are not sure we could take such wonderful adventures with true abandonment of time and place. I am in need of where I will sleep each night so my anxiety is stepped up a notch until I review your pictures and posts. Gives me faith in an ability to change when needed. Your posts in all honesty are such a nice human escape from the USA….. you remind me how truly beautiful our country is during a disgusting moment in Amerucan humanity. It is hard to remember that the state of our nation is only a moment or blip in time even though I believe it is going to make a serious negativd impact on our country. Darn….. I got carried away ! Love your writings, pictures and fun…..
Thanks Vikki! It is good to know you enjoy the posts. Hopefully through them we can share not only all the natural wonders, history, and oddities out there, but also a little bit of the humanity of the places we visit. We all have biases and preconceived notions about things, places, people until we go out and actually experience them. And with our traveling home we do not always know what state or country we will go to sleep in, but we know we are always going to do it in our very own bed.
Those Amazon boxes are a great idea. Don’t stop blogging. If you do, we’ll have to print up some T-shirts which say “Bring the Ape Man Back!” with a picture of Bob underneath. That will confuse people – a bobble-head dog wearing a tiny sombrero and a reference to an ape man.
Oh! Thanks for stroking our fragile egos! But now we are going to have to stop blogging so we can see these t-shirts!
Yes, keep on blogging! It’s for us too! We appreciate what you are doing precisely because we can’t do it at the moment, if ever. And reading about someone else’s adventures is the next best thing (with pictures too!). Thanks for all your words, pictures and insights.
Thanks so much for your kind words and encouragement. Hopefully we are going to keep writing as long as we can keep traveling!