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| "You've been missing a lot of work lately, Jim" "I wouldn't say I've been missing it, Bob." |
TPS Report
Cover Sheet
Lead Facilitator: James Kahn Date: 8/1/13 9/1/13 9/6/13
Executive Summary: All operations expected to take place in Maine and Canada were implemented with minor changes to itineraries in certain cases. Return to the US occurred on schedule and Summer Obligation Event (SOE) three of three was successfully executed. Additional unplanned SOE's were also executed. The preparation of this blog is taking place in Rapid City, South Dakota. You know the place. Overall technical, financial, and emotional systems are nominal.
Locations*
*Geographical Note: Most of you people are terrible at geography. Just awful. So when the abbreviations of Canadian provinces appear, here is a helpful fun guide: NB = New Brunswick, NS = Nova Scotia, NL = Newfoundland, and PEI = Prince Edward Island. They are all in fucking maps people. Jesus.
Summary: The original TPS report was filed in Wells, ME. Since then, a myriad of locations have been visited including but not limited to: Bar Harbor ME, Cutler ME, St. Johns NB, Alma NB, Halifax NS, Taylor Head NS, Baddeck NS, Ingonish NS, Sydney Mines NS, Doyles NL, Trout River NL, Lomond NL, St. Anthony NL, Cow head NL, New Glasgow NS, Charlottetown PEI), Millinocket ME, Brunswick ME, Wells ME, Chichester NH, Swanzey NH, Portsmouth RI, Swanzey NH, Fairport NY, Richmond MI, Spruce MI, Grand Marais MI, Wassau WI, Adrian MN, Kadoka SD. A spaghetti diagram shows thus:
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| We used the singularity of Swanzey in an orbital sweep to achieve escape velocity! |
Well now we are getting somewhere! While the SOE's did bring us back to Location Zero (Swanzey) in mid August, we have traveled significant distances to both the east and west. Just for fun:
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| Line charts with trend lines are fun, right? |
Not lets take a look at the total miles we have driven, for the fun of it:
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| Bar graphs are even more fun, yes? Note that the farther west we go, the more we seem to drive due to the bigness of these big rectangular states. Let me know if this gets too deep for you |
Analysis: Holy shit! Apparently this is a road trip. Through June we had driven 1645 miles and that seemed like a lot. Well. We have added an additional 5548 miles to bring our grand total to 7193. We could have driven from Venice Italy to Ulanbaatar, Mongolia. Do you know how long that used to take? 24 years if you are Marco Polo.
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| We're faster than you, bitch |
Well, we have toured all of the Canadian Atlantic provinces that we wanted to and made it approximately as far west as we had anticipated by now.
Experiences
Summary: Oh where to begin! July started with a long fantastic weekend in Acadia National Park where Lindsay was able to conquer her fear of heights on one of the sketchyassyiest (most sketchyassed? Shut up, my blog) trails I have ever been on, the Beehive Trail. Look how happy she is!
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| I'm not actually very good at interpreting happiness, but I'm pretty sure she is fine
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Farther up the coast, we camped out in the middle of effing no where with our own private coastline before hopping the border into Canada (only hitting one road sign on the way!) to explore Fundy National Park in New Brunswick. We spent an obligatory night in Halifax, not because either of us like cities but because we had no idea what else to do and it turned out to be a blast and later lead us to possibly the most gorgeous beach I have ever seen in Taylor Head where we were able to camp all by ourselves.
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| This was ours. And nobody else's |
Shortly after, we executed or primary objective from the last TPS report by touring the Cabot Trail around the tip of Nova Scotia, thoroughly enjoying Cape Breton Highland National Park before hopping the ferry to Newfoundland. While we had plans to travel the entire island, there was just way too much to do so we stuck to the west coast and enjoyed the incomparable Gros Morne National Park as much as we could.
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| Lindsay, getting some hiking done between episodes of tweaking out and flipping me off..... |
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| ....and she earned this! |
Gros Morne mountain may have supplanted Katahdin as my favorite hike ever. I am oddly emotional about saying that, but truly this is a gorgeous place that everyone needs to see.
Upon a frantic dash to a ferry, we were shocked to learn that it was now August! We spent the first few days of it playing in Prince Edward Island with a long lost friend of Lindsay's and were able to soak in a gorgeous island that seemed to be all farms and beaches. The water at Prince Edward Island National Park was the warmest I have been in since Barbados! This was our last experience in Canada - in case you missed it, I went into more detail here
We dashed through New Brunswick and hit up Katahdin on the way south. Since she loves these kinds of trails so much, I once again gave Lindsay the opportunity to truly enjoy herself in her natural environment.
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| Aw, you're number 1 too! |
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| Not so bad now, is it? IS IT??? |
The next couple of weeks saw us return to our roots a bit and reconnect with family and friends - it was great to take a break from the road, and, you know, shower and stuff. Lindsay has summed it up excellently here.
Upon leaving once again, we found ourselves in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and were thrilled to discover miles upon miles of gorgeous beaches and great hiking - we really did not know what to expect but we were particularly blown away by Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
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| Not how I pictured Lake Superior until visiting |
And we wrapped up August, of course, in beautiful Kadoka, South Dakota. Wicked nice truck stop.
Analysis: We won July and August. We were able to hike our butts off, enjoy more beach days than I have ever had in one summer, and somehow still spend quality time with the people we love. We absolutely could not have expected more (nor would we have set expectations or our yoga teacher would yell at us).
Financial Status
Lindsay has been remiss in publishing the awkward post that goes into depth on this one, and frankly it would be too much work for me to do now. Suffice to say for now that we are still under budget, although we have absolutely been getting killed by gas - it is BY FAR our biggest expense, and we knew it would be a weakness going into the trip but it is still painful for a couple of typically frugal folks. To make up for the pain at the pump, I am typing this from the driveway of a friendly Couch Surfing host in Rapid City, SD having showered, done three loads of laundry, and tapped is electricity for a blissful night of air conditioning. The ~$50 we saved over doing this all at a camp site will buy us half a tank of gas and get us about 150 miles. Ouch.
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| It's late and I'm tired, but its something like this |
We should also mention that August saw us do quite a bit of mooching off of friends and family, but also saw a lot of just plain old driving to get across boring places. I'm looking at you, Wisconsin and Minnesota - we specifically avoided Iowa to get away from shit like that. Anyways - it will be interesting to see how the budget plays out now that we are truly on our own. We save money where we can control it (places we stay, how we eat, etc) to splurge it where we can't - at the gas pump.
Camper Status
Summary: Hard to believe, but since leaving NH back in June, we have spent a grand total of two nights out of the camper - once at a tent site in RI and once in a bedroom of some family in MI. We are comfortable and happy, we have systems and everything has a damn place or I get yelled at. *gets up, closes the cabinet before Lindsay notices* No major issues at all. We did have one $100 truck maintenance issue, something about the bracket for the e-brake shattering, but that didn't seem very important at all.
Analysis: Probably didn't need a separate Summary and Analysis section here. Oh well.
Relationship Status
Summary: We are still in a relationship
Analysis: We are still in a relationship
Forward Outlook
So far in September we have enjoyed epic scenery in Badlands National Park and the Black Hills in South Dakota - you people back east need to be aware that these places exist because they are fucking incredible. Whenever the hell Lindsay gets out of bed, we will be leaving for Wyoming and the epic parks that await: Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. The tentative plan has us leaving Yellowstone for Glacier up in Montana and then heading to Washington.....the plan gets progressively more fuzzy at that point. But it is likely that October will find us on the shores of the Pacific Ocean - keep your fingers crossed for us that we get a dry mild fall! Now if you will excuse me, I have to go here:
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| Dude. |
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