Tortuga to the East – Part 1
This Summer I was fortunate to spend an entire month road-tripping across the country and back with some of my best friends. The goals were few:
- Bring Tessa (Bosu) to Boston where she would be enrolling in grad school
- Stop in Chicago to deliver Rick a FarmBot and shoot video for the Kickstarter
- See ‘Big Ag’ in action in the Midwest, and shoot video of it for the Kickstarter
- “See America”
- Have a good, adventurous time
I think all of the above was accomplished. Below, and in more posts to come, are select photos from the journey and small stories/captions to accompany. While looking through, it is best practice to listen to the soundtrack of the trip. We basically had ~10 albums downloaded onto our phones that we listened to on repeat. They are:
- An Awesome Wave, by Alt-J
- Songs of Music, by Proxima Parada
- Alligator Man, by Red Willows
- Awake, by Tycho
- Spreadin’ Honey, by The California Honeydrops
- One, by The Beatles
- Currents, by Tame Impala
- Magnifique, by Ratatat
- Boys & Girls, by Alabama Shakes
- The Suburbs, by Arcade Fire
- Settle, by Disclosure
The first leg of the journey included Bosu, Cherie, and I in La Tortuga; and Gabe and Cameron in another car. We piled in early in the morning, grabbed some breakfast at Sally Loo’s, and headed off towards our first destination: Zion National Park in Utah.
En route to Zion, we stopped for a hot second in Vegas to try and find some boba. However, the strip is so hectic, especially with La Tortuga, that we never ended up finding it! -__- Instead, we just took photos with our favorite (not!) golden Trump tower rising from the desert, and then continued on.
After driving all day through the desert and sweating like mad in the air condition-less Tortuga, we got into Zion a few hours after sundown. There we met up with Gabe and Cameron at the campsite and made delicious well-deserved calzones in Cameron’s dutch oven. The next morning we prepared for the day’s activities.
Metapod Gabe in his cocoon.
We ate a simple but yummy breakfast of hot quinoa, chocolate chips, bananas, nuts, and cinnamon.
Cameron has a technique (which we all made fun of him for) of using a small square of a sponge to clean his dishes, and then trashing the small square. I guess he has a good point – that sponges can get pretty gross if not properly cleaned while camping. My technique? Just lick everything clean and call it good ;p
Gabe’s technique is to eat everything out of packaging, therefore not needing to use utensils and plate-ware at all! At one point, Gabe even ate pizza (yes, pizza!) out of a squeeze tube from Clif Bar Company. Ha!
Here we are taking the tram system in Zion and laughing at the ridiculous PSA’s to not feed the squirrels and other wildlife.
And then we started on our first hike to Angel’s Landing – the classic hike of beautiful Zion!
The red rocks of Utah are the most spectacular element of the landscape in my opinion. When contrasted with greenery and blue sky, it is striking how red the rocks can be!
The views from the top!
Back at camp for lunch.
To be continued in Part 2!