The KJAZZ pledge drive is over! It was quite a success, but kept me VERY busy this last month. I’ve barely had a chance to start planning my next road trip, but I’ll be leaving late next week. I’m focusing on doing research and interviews on the National Trails. This trip I’ll be heading up again through California, Oregon and Washington. Not sure yet how I’m heading back down. Much of it will depend on the weather I suppose.

I’m looking forward to seeing some friends in the Bay Area, Portland and Seattle, but mostly this will be a working trip. I’ll have 6 weeks or so on the road and already I’m feeling overwhelmed by everything I want to research and see. I’ll be passing through areas tied to the following trails:

• Juan Batista de Anza
• Pacific Crest
• Pony Express
• California
• Oregon
• Lewis and Clark
• Nez Perce

Depending on what the return route ends up being I may cross the Continental Divide Trail or the Morman Trail as well.

Yesterday, I spoke for a long time with Travis Boley who manages the Oregon-California Trail Association and he’s been fantastic in helping me get a start on figuring out who to contact and hopefully interview while I’m out on the road. Looking for more suggestions though.

Anyone have favorite historic or trail related spots? Any ideas for topics for some short-form (6-10 minute) audio documentaries or people to interview?

Categories: Locations
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I have a new (Ok, actually it’s been up for a few days and I’ve just been swamped) article up on the Indie Travel Podcast Website. Since it’s about organizing and sharing all the pictures you take on your travels I should probably follow my own advice and start posting the second half of my pictures from Hawaii.

I think this was the coolest beach in Hawaii. One of the nice things about having a friend or relative in the area you’re traveling to is that you get to hear about all the cool places not in the guide books. My cousin told us about a beach in an industrial area of Kauai where there used to be a glass factory. The factory isn’t there any more, but the broken glass has been worn smooth from the ocean over many years. It’s not a very scenic place, but if you go you’ll be looking down anyway. Here’s the view of the beach from a point further out in the water:

As we entered the beach to the right of the picture and at first all we found is really small, sandsize pieces of glass. Most of it is clear or amber and the sand itself is black so it was sort of interesting, but not quite the big deal that my cousin had made it out to be. But as you walk further along the cliffs along the left of the picture the sand and glass pictures get larger and larger and we started to see what he was talking about. The first picture was taken about 3/4th of the way along the little beach where the pieces were pebble sized. Talking to a nearby shopkeeper later in the afternoon I found out that we were there at a lucky time because the last few days had been stormy. Apparently it’s now pretty common to go there and discover the glass is all washed out to sea (after all the factory isn’t there anymore), but the storms tend to wash it back up on the beach.

The beach is in Port Allen in Kauai. If you happen to be nearby any of the locals should be able to give you directions. But other tourists won’t be of any help. It’s not in the guide books.

Within a two minute walk of the beach is an old abandoned Japanese cemetery, rich with photographic opportunities. This was my favorite shot:

Categories: Indie Travel Podcast articles, Locations, Pictures
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While I was in Hawaii my parents drove my car so they took apart the bed and put the front seat back in. It meant that while I was putting the bed back together I had a chance to take some pictures of the process that I’d missed the first time. I’ve added the missing steps to my Vandwelling page and hopefully that gives a more clear idea of what the inside of my little 30 square feet apartment looks like.

Categories: Car Living
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This picture was taking back in July, but a comment on a friend’s blog made me remember the greedy chipmunks outside of Rocky Mountain National Park.

Categories: Pictures
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I had about a week and a half for sight-seeing on Maui and spent the first two nights at a hostel, (renting a car for the night of New Year’s Eve was a ridiculous $101 a day, Jan 1-9, was a more reasonable $18). My idea was to rent the car and live in that while sightseeing the island. It’s been interesting because Hawaii is a bit different than the mainland, so some of my little tricks for finding places to stay don’t work so well. Also, going back to not having tinted windows and curtains has been strange. I miss my stealth!

Renting a car makes it real easy to make friends at a hostel, and after I moved out I hung out with J and D, two guys who were sightseeing in Hawaii after J’s brother’s wedding.

We did some picnicking on the beach, drove around West Maui (which I think is a better drive than the Road to Hana), biked down the volcano, hung at the pool and topped it off by watching and making fun of a couple of westerns. Actually, come to think of it, we made fun of a lot of things. Exactly my type of company.

Lack of planning (partly our fault for constantly distracting him) left D without a place to stay the night before he took the ferry to Honolulu so I had my first overnight guest while living in a car. I wish it’d been in an area I knew better. We had a couple false starts (or stops, rather) trying to pick out a place to stay, but in the end D found a nice residential area and we slept pretty well until about 6am. Or at least I did. D is 6’1″ so I doubt he was quite as comfortable in the passenger seat as I was in the driver’s seat. I was happy to introduce the whole sleeping in a car thing to someone new. I was quite amused by the whole thing.

Then again, I’m quite amused by many things.

For J: Why does the moon rise 50 minutes LATER each day. Trust the astrophysicist.

Categories: Car Living, Travel
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