Prelude To A Trip

So I have really sucked at updating this blog for trips. I didn't even realize it until several months after getting back that I never even finished chronicling the trip up the west coast. It was a combination of lack of internet and sleep, with an abundance of driving and trying to get as much in with what time I had left. At some point my cats died while I was gone too. Dealing with the death of pets, regardless of the fact that I mostly disliked said pets, is interesting. Luckily I had people back at the homestead to deal with most of it for me. The rest of the trip wasn't any less memorable, but after months had passed, and memory was becoming unreliable it seemed harder and harder to make myself chronicle those last days. In short, I saw several scenic vistas that took my breath away at a point in my trip when I was beginning to fear I was becoming immune to such things. I made it to The Oregon Vortex, a place very very similar to The Mystery Spot, and then decided it was time to start heading back towards Albuquerue. I drove day and night through southern Oregon, northern Nevada, large chanks of Utah (including a stop in SLC for delicious kouing aman from Les Madeline). Maybe one day I'll take the time to recreate that portion of my trip and sneak it in like it was never missing.

In the meantime I have taken a blitzkrieg trip that started as a trip to Washington D.C. but ended being to Phoenix with a friend to visit her brother, a long weekend to the Badlands in South Dakota, another Dragon*Con, and a couple small St. Louis and Atlanta trips. The Phoenix trip was fun but hectic, and my first time traveling long distance with someone other than just the voices in my head. It will always be a memorable trip. The Badlands trip was a ridiculous amount of driving there and back for only 2 full days of time in South Dakota. Despite that it was a beautiful trip with some beautiful drives through the Badlands and up into the Black Hills. Some day I would like to connect my unfinished Pacific coast trip back to the Badlands and take a ride up into an area called The Needles there in South Dakota. And now we're getting to the whole point of this post - my next trip.

A trip to Ireland has been something that has been planned but kept falling through. The first time it fell through I ended up taking my Pacific coast roadtrip. The second time it didn't work out was by choice and ended up being the Phoenix blitzkrieg. I decided rather suddenly a few months back that I wasn't going to let anything get in the way and started looking for cheap tickets. I got lucky within a few days of having decided to make the trip and found a dirt cheap one and everything started to fall into place from there. I found extremely reasonable lodging, and because I'm not really planning anything once I get there (although there are tons of things I want to do) there's really nothing that can go wrong once I get settled in. And that trip begins tomorrow. Yeah...I waited until the last minute to get up-to-date with the blog. Time and internet willing I will be doing at least semi-regular updates during my two weeks there. All that's left to do is put the last few things in the suitcase and get to the airport on time tomorrow. With any luck I will be posting another update in a couple days from Ireland. Wish me luck.