It's Our Party

 Happy birthday to us! Today we begin our third year of sharing our adventures with the world and we are just as excited today as we were when we started in 2015. We have always liked to travel and we have a long history of exploring the back country but having this blog has helped to push us to seek out adventures that we may not have in the past. I don’t think I would have been willing to drive two and a half hours to see 20,000 butterflies at Pismo Beach if I hadn’t decided to write about it. I never dreamt that I would be interested in exploring the San Andreas fault but lately I’ve been doing research on the subject and we’ve managed to travel a small section of it. You’ll see more stories on that in the coming months. We even found our way into a museum about water. Well, more specifically, a museum about the California aqueduct and its construction. Strange but true.

  The combination of living in California and having the blog has helped us redefine what adventure is to us. We’ve been lucky enough to be able to take our annual trips to Moab for the Jeep Safari, visit Yellowstone National Park every other year, and we’ve even found ourselves on a cruise ship a few times. But these trips take a lot of time, planning and money so we’ve had to pick and choose what vacations we would take each year. Today we research the area around us and find places to go that are close to us. It’s kind of like drawings a circle around ourselves and working our way out. Doing the research and asking the locals has turned us on to a lot of small sites that most tourists would never see because you simply didn’t know they existed. One of those is the William S. Hart museum. Mr. Hart was a huge silent movie star back in the day. Personally, I had never heard of the guy, but his former home is now a museum that offer free tours. You’ll get to read more about him next week but it’s just an example of us finding what we call a “quick trip” by doing a little digging.

  Another thing the blog has helped me with is my photography. I love to take photos. I may not be great at it, but I love to do it. I think more about the photos I take and plan out what types of shots I would like to get of a location before I go. That is something I have never done before. Having said that, I still run and gun most of it, but I’m getting better every trip. I have also liked editing the photos. I don’t like to go too over the top, but I don’t mind a little enhancement and sometimes I let myself get a little overboard with it. Again, I’m self-teaching myself these things so I think I’m entitled to have a little artistic freedom. The photography and videography has had the largest impact on us, I think. I rarely leave the house anymore without my backpack of camera gear. It’s a little sad, really. It’s not like I make a living by taking pictures, but sometimes it feels that way. Hey, you never know when a great photo opportunity is going to present itself. It’s best to be ready for it.

  I can’t wait to see where the blog is going to take us in the next twelve months. We have some great trips coming up and even better ones still in the planning stages. We’ll also be moving back home next year which will open us up more sites for us to visit. If I’ve learned anything from living in California it’s that a three-hour drive isn’t as daunting as it used to be. It turns out we can cover a lot of ground in a day and we want to take advantage of it. We of course, invite you to come along with us on these journeys and I hope that something you may have read on this blog has inspired you to find an adventure of your own. We look forward to sharing our third year with you. Happy trails!