Listen here or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or YouTube. Or read the transcript here.

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Listen here or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or YouTube. Or read the transcript here.

The post Western Colorado Ups and Downs (Podcast S4:E9) appeared first on Driving Inertia.

Listen here or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or YouTube. Or read the transcript here.

The post Our Gear’s Year (Podcast S4:E8) appeared first on Driving Inertia.

This story isn’t just about one of the scariest things that happened to these three. It’s also about friendships and inside jokes that last decades. And it’s about memory – how our minds highlight some events while glossing over others; how memory is often a collective, shared experience.

Listen here or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or YouTube. Or read the transcript here.

The post Montana’s Most Wanted (Podcast S4:E7) appeared first on Driving Inertia.

“I would say – absolutely do it! Don’t let other people try to talk you out of it or scare you away from it. Especially for younger women, I think it is so incredibly important to get out and do something by yourself. I never would have been as independent as I had been in my life if I hadn’t just gone and done some of those things. If I had waited for someone else to come with me, my life would be so much smaller than it was. You learn a lot about yourself when you’re out on your own without anyone around. You have to rely on yourself.”

Listen here or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or YouTube.

The post Wendy’s Cross-Country Motorcycle Adventure (Podcast S4:E6) appeared first on Driving Inertia.

In the latest episode, learn more about New Mexico cuisine, how a town famous for its name got its name, where to find sparkling wine in New Mexico, the tastiest green chile cheeseburgers, heroic hot shot crews, how we save money on splurge days, and more.

We have created a couple different ways to consume our podcasts, if you’re not into listening to them. We post transcripts and links to things we mention in the podcast on our podcast website. We also recently started a YouTube channel – sorry, there are no fancy videos there, but you can see audiograms with subtitles (be sure to turn on the closed captioning) that play along with the podcasts, which could be helpful if you can’t make out any words in my strange combo of upstate NY/WI/Chicago/sometimes vaguely southern accent!

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

The post New Mexico Truths (Podcast S4:E5) appeared first on Driving Inertia.

If you’ve been following us for a while, then you know that we also #vanlifed for a year a decade ago. Back then, we were living and traveling in an actual van – a Toyota Sienna minivan, that is. We drove more than 38,000 miles, we hiked a lot, and we saw great swaths of the country. It was easier to camp in popular places back then – we usually stayed in developed campgrounds in or near national parks and other well-visited sites, without any advance planning. We were able to roll into places like Glacier National Park in the afternoon and get a campsite for that night without having reservations. There were some places we struck out, but they were the exception, not the rule. That doesn’t seem possible anymore. Now you need a reservation just to enter many of the popular parks.

Back in 2012, we weren’t able to do any off-road or even much graded gravel road stuff in our stock minivan. We were too inexperienced; we didn’t have the right gear. This time around, because we’re avoiding busy places and because we intentionally got a setup that could get onto the roads we were too scared to drive last time, we haven’t been repeating ourselves too much.

But in Arizona, we did end up revisiting some places, because Arizona has so many places that we love. We’ve even gone back to them a few times in the in-between years. So this time around, we ended up re-re-re-visiting some places.

For two of these places, Bisbee and Jerome, we thought it’d be interesting to look back at our very first visits and see what has changed in the past ten years in these two famous Arizona mining towns. Paul wrote a funny comparison of the two towns on our blog back in 2012. Back then, Bisbee was our favorite Arizona mining town winner by a hair. Do we still feel the same way?

And…what happens when we decide to record after we’re a couple drinks in on a Saturday night? We end up with some great insights sprinkled with a bunch of f-bombs and a few accidental drunk history-esque moments.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

The post The Arizona Mining Town Smackdown (Podcast S4:E4) appeared first on Driving Inertia.

We just spent another five weeks in Utah! In the latest podcast episode, we talk about my top ten most memorable moments from those five weeks. From spider eyeballs to the time that Paul moved my foot and almost killed me – those five weeks were unforgettable. And Paul compares our costs from this round to our time in Utah last fall – did we achieve that $2,800/month ideal spend again? Listen here!

The post The Utah Episode (Podcast S4:E3) appeared first on Driving Inertia.

We’re coming up on a year of no-job roadlife! Our latest podcast episode is an unsolicited advice smorgasbord – what kind of advice are people giving us? And what advice do your two favorite unshowered dirtbags feel qualified to give you? Money, life, relationships…it’s all on the buffet table. Listen here!

If you want actual financial advice, we suggest reading “The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement,” by Mr. Money Mustache :)

With all the talk of inflation (I know, we’re sick of it too!) we thought it’d be interesting to look back on what one year of roadlife costs now vs. ten years ago. After our first year of roadlife, in 2011-2012, we put together a detailed report on what we spent that year. Looking back at it now, it’s really surprising how close the bottom line is to what we spent over the past year! The categories of spend have changed, but the total is nearly the same. Our 2011-2012 total was $51,700 and our 2021-2022 total was a little under $54,000. Now we need to see how much we can reduce that number in 2022-2023!

The post One Year of Early Retirement (Podcast S4:E2) appeared first on Driving Inertia.

The first episode of the new series of our podcast is out now – listen here! Hear about where we are now and why it’s Utah! Then, come along with us in the Bobs as we explore the San Rafael Swell and try to find a sheltered campsite on a very windy day – a typical day in our life.

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We’re back in Utah at a dispersed camping site so beautiful that it’s hard to focus on writing or anything else. Look at the horizon, starting to the center left: Over there are the snow-covered La Sals, the gorgeous mountain range that towers over Moab. The full range is visible, catching the afternoon light, the snow fields that will still cover the tops for months glowing a brilliant white. To the north of the La Sals, the red cliffs along the Colorado River are on view. To the right of the La Sals, the spiky mesas that tower over the southwest side of Moab make a stegosaurus ridge.

Next comes Arches National Park. First the grouping that includes Double Arch, The Windows, and all those other fun arches that everyone sees – we can even see one of the arches from here. Then the sandstone bowl that holds Delicate Arch, whose very top is only visible to us when the setting sun perfectly lights it up for a moment. With binoculars, we can see many tiny humans rounding the final curve in the trail before the arch pops into view and then waiting in line to take a selfie under said arch. Tiny cars crawl on the road through the park, way too many cars. Thousands of people are just over there, but they’re far enough away to seem unreal. After Delicate Arch comes the Fiery Furnace, with red sandstone fins marching back into the hillside. Then the Devil’s Garden with the grouping of sandstone ridges and fins that includes Landscape Arch, which we can actually pick out from here, its thin band of sandstone delicately spanning the gap in a sandstone ridge.

Continuing to the north, closer by, there’s a ridge of yellow sandstone and in it an unnamed arch that we tried to climb to earlier, scrambling across the petrified dunes and down washes until we were stopped by a dryfall that was too high to climb down and too surrounded by beautiful cryptobiotic soil crust to circle. Behind that yellow ridge, closing out the view to the right is the line of the Book Cliffs with I-70 at their base, filled with many tiny little cars and tractor trailers streaming across the state, way too fast.

We’re camped on the edge of a petrified dune that has eroded into patterns that look like reptile skin. I’m walking on a giant dragon that fell here and was petrified. In the middle ground between here and arch-land there are countless red sandstone mounds, green-tinged meadows, fields of small shrubs, fine red sand dunes covered with healthy cryptobiotic soil, cacti, and small shards of what looks like petrified wood.

It’s hard to relax thinking of the sheer number of adventures, both known and unknown, that we can see from this spot. It’s hard to sit still, but we found this campsite early and we had to have it, we just had to occupy this piece of the world for a night or two.

We’re back in Utah – we’re finally back West.

But let’s quickly catch up on where we’ve been for the last few months. The second to last time we checked in, we were wrapping up our first five months on the road in Durango, CO. After CO, we did way too much driving and flying, first to WI, then NY, then WI again, then a long stay in FL, then AR where we found some lovely camping and mountain biking that we want to check out in the future when it’s warmer, then to Kansas City. We spent almost no time camping in The Bobs, instead staying with friends, family, house-sitting, dog-sitting, a month at a rental in Florida, a blend of hotels.

Then we were inarguably headed back West. We stopped in St. Francis, KS, whose free city campground was the site of our last night of camping on our first year on the road ten years ago, the site of Paul’s ultimate triumph – which you’ll have to ask him about sometime. That place had unresolved sad feelings for me and being there again unexpectedly exorcised those old end-of-trip blues.

Then we crossed the state line back into CO, where I picked up the happiness I didn’t realize I had left at the border when we headed east in November. Some say the edge of the West is found at the Mississippi River. Some say it’s the Rockies. I say you know the edge of the West when you get there. It might not be one consistent place, but rather a feeling. This time the edge of the West was at the CO border for me, because that’s when I finally felt like I was home.

Oh, how I love CO. When the sky isn’t blue, it’s filled with drama. People seem so much happier to be alive in CO. I know how things work in CO. In CO, we told everyone that we saw that we were heading south to New Mexico next – we’d been telling people that for weeks. Then, the night before we left, we promptly changed our minds and pointed The Bobs straight west to Utah.

We had spent the past four months in the East longing for the West, for the easy and free camping, lack of crowds, dry air, plentiful hiking, mountains, deserts, and everything in between. We could have gotten that stuff in New Mexico, easily. We were eventually going to get around to Utah. But Utah was calling too loudly to wait. There are webs of dirt roads to explore between Moab and Escalante and Green River and Page, AZ. The weather is perfect right now. OK, it’s still kinda chilly and the wind has been epic, but it’s perfect enough. “Why not just get right back into what we want to do?” we asked ourselves. Ourselves didn’t have any good response to that, so to Utah we went.

Everyone has heard about the big five National Parks in Utah, which are amazing, but they’re way too busy. We’ve been there, done that. There is a TON more to explore in Utah. Even setting aside the State Parks and National Monuments, there are tiny dirt roads leading to amazing features everywhere. There are so many areas that I’ve looked at from I-70 and wished I could explore. Now we’re going to try to drive on as many of these dirt roads as the Bobs can handle. Because every single thing in this state is amazing, not just the things within the bounds of what someone decided to call a National Park.

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We haven’t seen many people on our dusty drives, which could make my plan to bring in other voices for this series a little tricky. But it’s never lonely. We have a noisy crow for an alarm clock. For entertainment, we have lizards that run so fast over the sand that they look like they’re floating. We have a beautiful dark brown wild horse who dances curiously at a safe distance from our campsite, all legs like an awkward pre-teen. His hooves have never known horseshoes. We have an owl that hoots quietly throughout the night for company, if we happen to wake. Seeing another person this far in the wilderness is strange, anyway. It’s like walking into your living room and finding a stranger sitting on your couch.

…

For our first recorded day in the life, we are bringing you along as we explore Red’s Canyon and hunt for a sheltered campsite in Emery County, a truly underrated section of Utah west of Green River (the town and river) and south and east of the mountain ranges that run north to south up the state towards Salt Lake City and Park City.

Note that there is some swearing in the Saturday day in the life version of this podcast, so be ready to cover baby Eliza’s ears! And Mom, be ready to cover yours too!

To hear the day in the life – listen to the podcast!

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The post Back West (Podcast S4:E1) appeared first on Driving Inertia.

Optimism is our working assumption right now.

In series four, we will continue to share updates from the road including “days in the life,” where we’ll take you along on a typical day on the road. We also hope to bring in other voices, now that we’re less scared to talk to strangers in laundromats and in bars and wherever else we meet people. We’ll share stories about why other people are on the road, their travel nightmares, and their inspirations.

If you have a story you’d like to share to get us started, email us at info(at)roadtrippinginamerica.com. We’d love to hear from you.

The first couple episodes will be coming out in the next few weeks. They’ll include things like an update on where we are now, our first “day in the life” episode, more ramblings on money, and roadlife advice.

Series four is taking a bit longer than expected to get started because I have been working on a print version of The White Heart of Mojave story that we shared in series three – and it’s out today!! It’s available in Kindle ebook format and in paperback format – both on Amazon. If you’re able, please check it out and leave me a review on Amazon – that helps others find the book.

We can’t wait to bring you along as we see what’s out there next.

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Also…it looks like we were so lulled by the waves in January that we forgot to share our final series two episode here! If you want to hear a little bit about why we like Florida, check it out! This episode features delicious raw bars, freezing iguanas, the new worst smell I’ve ever experienced, miles of serene beaches, and all kinds of sea specimens.

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Usually, when we’re out on the road, we hate turning back. It feels like admitting failure, like giving in and giving up. But often, there’s some good stuff back there, stuff we missed on the way out, and we appreciate the chance to see it again with new eyes.

A hundred years ago, it was considered by most to be foolish, absurd, unthinkable for two women to travel on their own, especially to an undeveloped place like Death Valley. A hundred years later, anyone who thinks that idea is foolish – well, they are the ones considered absurd now.

A hundred years ago, in the early 1920s, Edna Brush Perkins and Charlotte Hannahs Jordan, both in their early 40s, went to find the heart of the desert in Death Valley, CA. A hundred years later, in the early 2020s, I, on the verge of 40, found the book Edna wrote about the experience, The White Heart of Mojave. As I devoured it, I wondered why it didn’t have a more prominent spot on the shelf of adventure classics. This is my attempt to make that book and these two women more widely known and to modernize this classic adventure narrative on the centennial of its publication.

Have you ever read a mashup novel like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or watched a Mystery Science Theater 3000 riff on a movie? This is going to be similar – I’m taking an existing story that’s in the public domain, reading it, and adding my thoughts, experiences, and some historical perspective along the way.

The White Heart of Mojave has a total of twelve chapters that I’ll be releasing two at a time, every two to three weeks.

The first two chapters are out today! Subscribe to Road Tripping in America now on your favorite podcast app to ensure you don’t miss an episode.

See you on the road!

-Lisa

Photos and captions from 2011 visits ;)

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