Dan and I are a couple of art dorks.

Exploring Las Vegas hasn't been high on our priorities list, but an opportunity came up that we couldn't pass up

Everything was taken from Japanese Americans in an instant, and then 4 years later, in a flash, they were let back into the world with nothing except for a country that betrayed them and a society manipulated to reject them.

So when we were invited to a wedding in Napa this year, we went full road trip status. I splurged on a new vlog camera and we made sure to make time for some roadside attractions.

Hiking is fun, but hiking with a park ranger is a flipping bad ass adventure! Without my friend, we would have hiked around the park following designated trails and such, seeing the sites but never going deep in the canyons. With my friend, we were opened up to a whole new world of Ancient Puebloans architecture and petroglyphs.

When I woke up in Santa Fe, I gazed out our hotel window on the desert scenery and watched the sun heat the earth. It was a soft blue morning and I could feel Santa Fe’s unique peaceful energy.

Our first trip together 4 years ago was to Monterey and this 6-hour retreat from Los Angeles holds an incredibly special place in our hearts. On top of that, Big Sur is one of the most beautiful places in the United States, and Monterey is home to cute, cuddly seals and otters.

I’d been on the phone with the receptionist earlier in the evening inquiring about lodging. There was a wedding in town and everything was booked but we could pay the $10 service fee and sleep on the property using their amenities. We hadn’t packed a tent for this road trip, so we decided to just sleep in our car in the El Cosmico parking lot.

Iselton is a rundown small town that holds historical significance as one of the first thriving Japanese and Chinese communities pre-World War II. I found a fascinating paper on Iselton that I'll link to here, as it will highlight the history of the town much better than I could. We went to Iselton looking for a building that could possibly be my O-Jichan's (great grandfather's) boarding house and soda shop.

New Orleans haunts me. My experience there was good, yet I feel my time there is unresolved. I left a piece of me in New Orleans, and I want to return in order to explore and understand the city better. New Orleans is a living breathing city, it possesses a strong spirit.

These anecdotes are my truth, but my memory is that Dan and I flipping killed it that day and from Seattle to Eugene, Oregon we saw everything on our travel list. We laughed and ate a sandwich from a Seattle deli around the Oregon/Washington border. We created more dorky memories for us to treasure.

I was a child in the 90’s, but my sister was a teenager and with minimal parental supervision Seattle pop culture was downloaded into my brain pre-double digits. I knew of Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, I watched Kurt Loader read MTV news and my favorite season of Real World to this day is Seattle.

Spectre is in the center of this private peninsula and once we spotted the church steeple,  Dan and I pulled over and got out to walk around the dilapidated set. We didn’t go inside any of the building as there was a lot of overgrown plants and honestly, I was chicken, afraid of getting hurt. But still I was just thrilled to say I had made a stop in Spectre.

Everything about the eatery was perfect, and everything about me that day was falling apart. I was dealing with major in the moment fear of missing out anxiety. That terrible, anxious feeling I get where I question my experience while I am experiencing it, wondering if I'm having enough fun - when that question alone takes all the fun out of it.

I find mushrooms to be so magical! I remember being fascinated by their sudden appearance in our front lawn and learning about the unique bio-makeup of fungus in school. One of my earlier memories was my dad making sure I knew NOT to eat wild mushrooms on our front lawn and only mushrooms from grocery stores.

We had planned to go hiking at Smith Rock that day, but I knew that with how much pain I was in, it would be impossible. Yet, we still wanted to see the beautiful Smith Rock park, so Bowerbird drove us in that direction while I slept in the passenger seat. I think I was asleep for 2 hours before I woke up while we happened to drive past an Alpaca farm.

The Northern California coastline is like no other, especially in the morning when the low clouds and mist of the waves combine to create an ethereal landscape. The soft pastel colors of the sun rise is accented by a pearlescent lining above the sea foam.Seeing deer signs are not uncommon while on a road trip, but seeing a deer grazing by the road can be unique. When we came upon an Elk sign we figured it was the same thing, until we noticed dozens of Elk all around us, munching on their breakfast right along the road.

Our road trip had already been steeped in music history, having gone to the Grand Ol Opry in Nashville and Muscle Shoals in Alabama, so it’s to be expected we hit up Athens, GA as well (or at least that’s what Bowerbird felt). The day we visited Athens, we grabbed an awesome breakfast in Atlanta at the Rosebud café. When we picked the restaurant it was unbeknownst to us that the owner, Ron Eyester, was a contestant on Top Chef Season 12. 

When we left San Francisco for the Redwoods it was noon and gloomy. Our goal that day was to get to the Redwoods, to a specific camping spot Bowerbird had picked out, and spend the night in our tent. Unfortunately, time and weather were not on our side. By the end of the day, as the sun was setting, we were still 45 minutes away from the campsite.

Our friend had told us that the Blue Bottle location next to our hotel was the absolute best, so hoping third times the charm, after I was done working we walked to Blue Bottle together. The line was ridiculously long and as time was running out, we decided to give up and just walk to Cowgirl Creamery inside the Ferry Building.

I love to share my life, my story, and selfishly (as long as the internet doesn't crash) in the future I get to look back at all this documentation of my life and just smile! Dementia isn't an urban legend, especially in my family, so how wonderful would it be to have a collection of stories for my brain to return too. Reference points to jog a lost thought back into place.