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Camera: Canon 5D | Lens: EF24-105mm | Setting: f/7.1, 30sec, ISO 1000 From us to you, good reader, a New Year wish. The place to be on this recent New Year's Eve, for us and an assortment of friends anyway, was a far off slice of beach on the Sea of Cortés down in ol' Mexico. And we couldn't stop thinking of you. It's a place that's good for kids, clean and empty, and as relaxing or as adventurous as . . .
To hear my wife tell it, I present no shortage of difficulty when it comes to Christmas trees. She's probably right. Before our second Christmas I barnstormed with fury that we forget a tree and get a cactus instead, because that was something we could plant in the yard after making a spectacle of it. Well, that unfestive suggestion grew no wings and did not fly. We still found ourselves at a tree lot, looking for something perfectly triangular and uniform and just tall enough and something more or less out of a storybook and everything else that just doesn't come naturally to things that are, well, natural. We bought one. Probably for 60 bucks. The whole experience left me dissatisfied . . .
Somewhere along the road to progress, civilized automotive manufacturers decided the "gas light" was a good thing to add to the dashboard. In most cases when that little red orb illuminates, you're supposed to feel some gratitude but you don't, do you? It's really like getting your final warning. Under the best of situations running out of gas is a downright drag, so a little hey-bro-put-somthing-in-the-tank ought to be a nice reminder; instead it's more of a bummer, the jig is up. Well. As far as running out of gas is concerned, this was not the best of situations . . .
A handful of young ladies go on a road trip to the Mediterranean coastline in a VW bus and they bring their longboards. Remember road trips with friends? These 10 minutes of stoke and good times from Juan Rayos and the Longboard Girls Crew peers into the love of longboarding and the sense of freedom that comes with a mighty fine road trip with good friends. * * *
What says "midlife crisis" like a new found interest in motorcycles, sports cars, or bombshell girlfriends? When my brother turned 40, all of a sudden he was into punishing his body. He was pulling off ultralight day-long sprints on trails that normal folks spend two or three days backpacking. He completed a rim-to-rim-to-rim hike of the Grand Canyon in one weekend. He clung to the door of his Tacoma, dragging his legs down the pavement for a half block, as a thief stole it right out of his driveway. Turning 40 ain't easy. The salt-n-pepper dudes in this film hit midlife at full throttle but from a different angle . . .
You need some kind of contraption to get you and the munchkins to the crag. To the break. To the trailhead. To the put-in. Or you just need a machine to get you down a dirt road that'll get you to a sweet spot on the coast of Baja. But vehicles reach into your life far beyond "a thing to get me from A to B." They become an extension of your personality, for better or worse, and I like to think of it as a delicate coalescence of superfluous love affair and absolute necessity. I could be wrong. In the quest for the ultimate adventure vehicle, family or no family, love at first sight is rare. Maybe not impossible, but certainly rare. When we bought this 2005 Nissan Frontier Crew Cab, we also had a 2002 bright red Jeep. So I wasn't sure, really, how I'd get along with this new truck. But we drove it home and went about the business of, oh, slowly tweaking some things to make it suitable for our style of travel while adhering to the old wisdom: "Pay no attention to anything not nailed down."
My buds bombed my inbox a few times this summer. Several of them hit the backroads of the American west on solo trips, just Dad and the kids. Nearly every one told me some variation of this: "Just got home, bro! I'm beat, exhausted, dirty, smelly, didn't get enough sleep, didn't rest enough, it was more work than it was relaxation, totally kicked my ass, but I'm looking forward to doing that again!" They so perfectly summed up parenthood, didn't they?
If it's one thing Adventure Parents is all about, it's the parents. Not the kids. They're spoiled enough, right? The Sealander amphibious camping trailer just slid into my inbox from a friend, and, the way I see it, it's far too small for a family, but just right for the blissful consenting couple. It's barely more than a water-going cottage in which you can snuggle up . . .
It's not too frequent that I take a fellas-only trip, and that's either a bummer or something my doctor would applaud. For instance, three days of living on hotdogs, cheeze puffs, and mediocre-at-best canned light beer (vented wide mouth!) doesn't do a body good. I'm not letting out any deep secrets about trips with the boys. That's the menu - likely all across the land, give or take an ingredient. Everyone knows it's an unusual dude who cooks in favor of nutritional value, balance, and class when there are no lovely blondes, brunettes, or red heads nearby to impress.
Yes, cardboard box. What? Why are you laughing? Because I receive a good number of emails about our 12-volt fridge/freezer that we have in our truck, I posted earlier five things you should know about them to help answer the usual questions. I know and understand that an $800+ fridge inside the ol' family ride just isn't in the cards for most folks, so it came as quite a surprise when, as I was working on that article, an email slid into my inbox introducing me to this sustainably-minded cardboard cooler from Boutique Cascades. You read that right. Cardboard. I heard that chuckle, you. Take a look at this thing anyway.
Ah, Utah. Utah, Utah, Utah. You look so lovely today. Now check out Darren and Donna's 1964 Canned Ham trailer they scored on eBay. Like most of us first time parents with a backpacking habit (or insert your own form of outdoor adventure), they had a miserable time tent camping with their fresh-born little one who just couldn't manage to go to sleep at night in a tent. But they didn't give up too easily.
What makes this video so perfect for AdventureParents.com isn't that it's a superb adventure story enlivened by non-stereotypical rock climbing action and the thrill of getting to it. Yes, this short captivates your attention in the first minute, don't worry. But watch for the thread that runs in and out of it on growing up, having a family of your own, all that mental clarity you had when you were young, and what those things mean to your approach to adventure of any sort nowadays. The thing is, you see, you can take three serious rock climbers (Mark Synnott, Alex Honnold, and James Pearson) of varying ages and backgrounds to the opposite side of the planet, pack them into a small convoy of crusty Land Rovers and point them into the south eastern part of the Sahara Desert, a region called Ennedi in the country of Chad, for an 800-kilometer drive across roadless desert where they'll attempt to make incredible first ascents up some wicked rock towers, and guess what? Right, it'll be a seriously amazing, sick adventure composed with interesting cinematography and storytelling. But that's expected, right? Take the armchair and enjoy.
It's road trip season, so raise your hand if you grew up in the back seat of some car bound for a National Park or Disneyland or your long lost aunt's house across the country in which you witnessed a few throwdowns between your parents who were trying to navigate with a paper map on a Summer road trip.
Ara Gureghian's life on his motorcycle is much more than carefree fun times on the road, and I have to be careful of what I say here. He calls it his therapy and promise to his son, Lance, who died from cancer at just 26 years old. I gather from his writings that he and Lance planned to hit the road together one day as a father-son duo on motorcycles. Ara now travels with his little buddy Spirit, a rescued pitbull, and they've been all over the country on their motorcycle sidecar get-up . . . Watch this video.
In May of 2004, Brooke and I had been married for a year and the notion of me being a father was still, you know, alarming. We spent the weekend of our first anniversary down in Sonora, Mexico kayaking on the Sea of Cortés near the little drinking village of San Carlos. The day she and I left, I met my friend Brian at a seedy dive in Tempe right on our way out of town, sipped a chilled Patron, and he cornered me again about some band he liked. This time he came armed with a freshly purchased copy of ¡Americano! by Roger Clyne and The Peacemakers and he made me promise that we'd give it a whirl. I lied and said okay because I was so focused on getting to Mexico and putting a paddle in the water.
Three-and-a-half years ago we crossed into Sonora, Mexico at the little border post at Sasabe, drove that long washboard madness known as the Altar-Sasabe corridor and I doubt we'll ever do that again. Not because of the washboard - rough and long, yes, and otherwise just fine. It was those guys wearing ski masks in August carrying machine guns that tipped the scales for me. "If they block the road," my gut insisted, "I'm going to ram them." There were two of them. They had staged a silver Jeep Cherokee with bald tires, and probably hitting on just five cylinders, perpendicular to the road, and backed up onto the berm on the left side of the road. When we approached from a quarter-mile away I could visually make out the two figures, but not their masks, nor their guns. But I knew. I knew.
The age of the station wagon is coming to an end, according to our buds Tom and Ray of Car Talk (actually, it's Jim Motavalli). Maybe you're sighing in relief. Maybe you're saying, "No duh, bro." Maybe you're dropping a tear for those old summer road trips in which you soaked up thousands of miles of paved America, rocking out via Sony Walkman on your head. But what if station wagons were the ultimate family adventure machine?
There's a reason why I came up with 3 Adventure Facts about Utah last week. That's where we went for six days, just for fun. Here is a sample of photos for you.
Launching a drive through South America by way of a loop around The United States in a camper van with your family - even with little ones you love so much that you ache at the idea of them growing up - is both easy and hard. Easy in this sense: all you have to do is decide, pack your junk, and go. You don't even need a plan or a map. But it's harder on the emotional side, and that's really the part that puts the brakes on for most of us. Once you start thinking about the consequences of your big trip, such as the hit to your savings account, an uncertain financial future, time away from your friends, guilt trips (lovable) from family, and all of that, out come the joyous mid-day nightmares. Right or wrong, that's just the way it is.
Going to California from Luke Humphrey on Vimeo. Welcome to today's Chillax. You're going to step into a forest of giant redwoods, look up at Yosemite's El Cap, walk along the dunes in Death Valley and then some. Be paying attention at 1:33. That's my favorite part. *** Ummm, The Sunday Morning Chillax? Here's the idea. You're up early. You're enjoying a cup of coffee in the quiet morning while your little turds sweet children sleep in. We'll share a video of something to give you happy, relaxing thoughts about mountains, fresh air, fun, or whatevs. Enjoy. Relax. You deserve it. Might be every Sunday, might not. Hey, that's the price of free.
On my way home from the Mojave National Preserve, not one, not two, but three strangers eyed my truck, slid their sunglasses down their noses, grinned in a funny way, and said, "Well, it looks like you had some fun." Each one, word for word. Must I say it? Yes. Road trips are all about weird encounters. Take the scenes in My Cousin Vinny - a New Jersey-Italian pair thrust into the American South with "mud in da tie-yuz."
You might think that the major difficulties in undertaking a weekend adventure travel trip with the family have to do with:
Put that in your reality TV pipe and smoke it. Then again, sheez, if it sounds so horrendous, why do it at all? There's an explanation somewhere. I assume I'll find it one day. |
