New Mexico: Taos, Los Alamos, and Bandelier

My plan after leaving Kevin’s after forever was to head south into New Mexico or west into Utah, but looking at the 100 degree temps in parts of Utah I wanted to see made the decision easy. I must have made it sound so fun that Kevin decided to come with after my few days …

Colorado: Ouray

While we were in Telluride I overheard a man on his phone saying something like “well it’s not supposed to start coming down until around 6″, put two and two together to check the weather, and sure enough it was going to snow. 3-9” in the mountains above 10,000 ft (where we’d been the night …

Texas: Austin

I’d been planning to visit my friend Kevin’s sister and her family in Austin before all the crazy came about, and they very kindly still offered to take me into their home as part of their social distancing group. I hung out for a few days with Darla, Jeff and their kids in a suburb …

Louisiana: New Orleans

New Orleans! I was very excited to go to New Orleans, and it was not a let down. I happened to visit when the weather was beautiful, and the Corona crazies hadn’t yet hit in full force. I got extremely lucky by knowing Megan, another friend from work, who is from the area and has …

Tennessee: Memphis

Driving to Memphis was fairly uneventful, and I arrived on the later side and made a last minute impulse decision to stay at the Graceland campgrounds since I didn’t have a good sense of where anything was in the city and had heard from multiple people that there were definitely some neighborhoods that were better …

Tennessee: Nashville

After my day touring Mammoth Cave I arrived in Nashville in time for a great dinner at this cool place in Five Points/East Nashville where I had turnip-noodle pasta that was so good I made actual happy yummy noises eating. Excellent start to a Sunday night, and while eating I googled some options for music …

USVI: St. Croix

While traveling with my friend around southern Florida felt like being in vacation mode on what is fundamentally a vacation from my usual life, hopping over from Fort Lauderdale to visit St. Croix was just a straight up vacation. My friend Delyla is pretty much the craziest workaholic who is in demand and takes full …

Florida: Miami area

I bummed around Miami for a few days here and there mainly for the beaches. The beaches! My first go through Miami was the tail end of my time with my travel buddy. We come into town and stayed in Little Havana for our last night before he headed back to real life. Not gonna …

Florida: Key West

Long post for 3 days, but I was in total vacation mode and packed in all the things! Kevin and I rolled south into Key West on a Friday morning armed with recommendations from our friend Grant and started off with brunch at Blue Heaven, a place with a cool patio overrun (like most of …