The photos

After our original May travel plans got crunked a bit with the unexpectedly quick death of Jen’s aunt, we salvaged the second half of the scheduled time off into a trip to mark off the two newest national park units, which had been designated in the waning days of the Biden administration while we were off in Africa.

You’d imagine that my photo “reclaiming” the completion of my national parks quest would get top billing for the trip. But, I had extended my itinerary quite a bit over Jen’s portion, which sent me barreling around remote areas of OH, PA, WV, KY, and IN without her. I spent a lot of time in the rugged, very rural mountains of coal country, where it seemingly rained every single day, even while I found to run across some real gems. So this quick snapshot of a rain-soaked black bear, somewhere on private coal mining land at the edge of Pennsylvania, seemed to be a more representative choice.

It was also a struggle to chose a photo for our Utah-Idaho trip, but I think this is a good choice: the EBR-1 Reactor, a place that had been on my list for awhile, but that I hadn’t quite gotten to. Because in a number of ways, the entire trip was about “cleaning up” some of the spots in the region that have been on our to-do list for awhile.

Definitely the worst part of the summer was when my mom had to put down her dog, a major center of her life for the last 14 years. Needless to say, it was a rough day—though I’m proud of how well my mom has embraced her now pet-less life.

A good chunk of our summer—way too much of it, really—has been dedicated to replacing our windows and buying shutters. From initial research, to hosting many, many salespeople, to (still) dealing with required fixes, to waiting for the shutters to finally arrive while living with sheets tacked over the new windows. We didn’t order this configuration, but I’m excited to get almost any style over the windows at this point—I just want to be done with it all. I hate home improvement projects, even the ones that you farm out to others to do the actual work.

This shot seemed like the best to represent my health challenges this summer. I’m still under “sorta” restrictions, vague recommendations from my doctors as they try to figure out what caused my heart arrhythmia. For a bit, that meant no alcohol at happy hour, so here was my foray into NA beer. Luckily, that was one of the first restrictions lifted (whew! that NA stuff is terrible).

Our LA weekend trip was anchored by a trip to a Dodgers game with three friends, the first of three MLB ballparks we’d mark off in just over a month for Jen’s rekindled ballparks quest. It’s also noteworthy as we transition to focusing on quests other than national park units, which have dictated so many of our domestic travels this last decade.

Here’s my favorite photo from our random weekend in central Nebraska. We had a lot more fun than expected on our short trip to this unlikely destination.

A haboob rolls in while I’m at happy hour. We’ve missed so many summer storms the last few years, either because we were traveling or because they simply never managed to materialize. So it was fun to get a solid monsoon storm, even if it was a bit wild of a bike ride home.

Our return trip to Ohio and Pennsylvania was certainly a surprise, after our Canadian Rockies camping trip was canceled due to those doctor orders mentioned above. But it made the most sense to return to the region so Jen could mark off another 13 national park units. There wasn’t much new for me on the trip, save a visit to see Bockscar, checking out the now-completed Tower of Voices at the Flight 93 National Memorial, and marking off Fallen Timbers Battlefield and Fort Miamis NHS for my NPS Affiliated Sites quest. I chose to highlight Bockscar here, as a subtle nod to the Enola Gay Hanger we visited at Wendover Historic Field during our Utah-Idaho trip above.

The final photo is instead a map of my current progress on our counties quest as it stands after our summer trips. The light green are counties I revisited this year, and the dark green are new counties I visited this year. You can see the two meandering routes through Ohio and Pennsylvania cross one another multiple times, plus the large blotch we completed in Nebraska, plus our foray through Utah and Idaho and adjacent states.

Compared to our initial travel plans, which included two very long road trips, this progress is a bit disappointing. But dashed hopes and canceled trips are part of life, so I’m glad we were able to rebound and get in some travel, even if it was a bit less exciting than we otherwise had planned. I have one additional long-ish road trip next month, but that’s likely it for the remainder of the year.

An assessment of the summer

I guess it makes sense to add a final wrap-up assessment of the summer.

Overall, it was a less-than-stellar summer. I wish we had another month of it left; I really wanted to get a trip or two into the mountains. Fall is always our “stay home” season, in large part due to the ASU football schedule. It’s often when we focus on non-travel projects, like improving some part of our home or working on some other aspect of our lives. As I pull back a bit from my ASU fandom, however, we’ve added in a bit more travel than previous years, but I’m still bummed that we didn’t get in at least one really big road trip during the warmer months.

That said, we did do the best we could with the limitations we had. Jen’s made some serious progress on her national park units quest, and is now poised for finishing in 2027. And I’ve made some good progress on my counties quest, specifically in reaching the 50% mark in a number of states I was deficient in. We’ve also gained some additional clarity around how we want to proceed with an “adventuremobile” purchase this, and how that fits into our travel strategy for the next 6-8 years. So in those ways, the summer’s been productive, even if we weren’t blown away by our travel destinations. I’m excited for spring and summer 2026 travel, especially as we can better dial in our road trip vehicle and gear.

The post My 2025 summer in 10 photos appeared first on rscottjones.

At our best, when my wife and I face a life challenge, we try to ask ourselves, “What could be good about this, and how can we lean into that benefit?”

For example, earlier this year, we got word that my wife’s flexible work schedule was being rescinded and replaced by a rigid, Mon-Fri 9a-5p type schedule. This doesn’t seem like much, but beyond wreaking havoc in her day-to-day job duties, it would also eliminate many of our weekend trips—effectively cutting our travel in half. For us, that’s a huge deal. We had built our lives around having this type of schedule flexibility, making big life decisions based on optimizing for an at least somewhat flexible schedule. So it was a big blow.

I got the news via text, and after a few moments of fuming, sat down and scribbled out a quick list about how we could make the best of it by leaning into the benefits a more rigid schedule could offer us, plus what actions we could take to take advantage of the new situation (and yes, my wife later added a little easter egg comment on there). We met up for happy hour after work to first commiserate a bit on our misfortune, but then secondly, to discuss how to make sure we gained sufficiently from this unfortunate change.

I adopted a similar attitude more than 15 years ago as my first marriage was falling apart. Distraught over the sudden and surprising separation, I knew things would feel bleak for quite some time.

But I told myself, “Look, if I have to go through something this shitty, I might as well get something good out of it, too.” I couldn’t change the impending divorce (which, I’ll note, sucked at the time, but also set me on course for an overall better life anyway—a “blessing in disguise,” as the saying goes), but I could ensure that I received at least some benefits from enduring the mess.

The most obvious way I could do that back then was to build a new friend base, as mine had always been shared with that ex-wife. So I got on this new app called Twitter, joined some conversations, and then forced myself to go out and meet a bunch of the people I had been chatting online with in person.

Early twitter, back when it was simply social networking (not social media) and no one looked at posting as “creating content” or “building a following” or “how I get my news,” getting together with others who used the app was a common occurrence. There were a number of in-person tweetups each week, so I started showing up at them. This was waaay outside of my comfort zone, but I pushed myself to do it anyway.

And, boy oh boy, did I gain from that endeavor! I made countless friends—literally dozens upon dozens—a large chunk of whom I’m still in regular contact with. Some of them became my closest of friends.

I’m a much better person for it all. Not just because I developed a great group of people to call friends, but also because the “project” gave me a sense of efficacy in this period of life that otherwise felt like it was happening to me. It gave me a goal to pursue, something to track progress against, something new to enjoy, something to distract from the “loss” that the bad thing had created. And it produced an enduring asset for my life. It made a significant difference in the trajectory of my life since.

I have a number of friends who are hurting right now, enduring their own period of shittiness of some sort or another, living through tough times that they don’t deserve. Some of them have adopted this philosophy, while others have struggled to do so, preferring to retreat and hunker down amidst the turmoil and, well, all the feelings. I support each of them, of course, and wish they didn’t have to deal with what they’re going through. It can be hard to take this “there must be a silver lining” approach, but I think it leads to a much better outcome.

The post Getting some good out of a bad situation appeared first on rscottjones.

Luckily, I’m not the asshole she was referring to.

Instead, it was Scott’s Cheap Flights, which rebranded to Going a few years back. Its owner was Asshole Scott, and he was an asshole because he had just sent out a mistake fare or otherwise stupidly cheap flight deal that we couldn’t take advantage of for whatever reason, and were therefore going to miss out on a great deal to a place we wanted to travel to.¹

And so I’d get a text that read: “Asshole Scott has $232 RT to Amsterdam in April “ or something similar, and have to reply with a frowny face or remind her that we already have April fully booked with other trips. Less exciting trips, I’m sure, but still—we at least had plans to go…somewhere.

I haven’t gotten nearly as many of these text messages the last few years, a consequence of fewer amazing deals combined with the impact that the pandemic and my dad’s health had on our ability to spontaneously plan trips. But those limitations have receded in the last year, so I hope we can take better advantage of some of those flight deals moving forward.

In the meanwhile, Asshole Scott has become a bit of a generic villain for complaining about a trip we’d love to take right now, but can’t for some reason.

“Man, it’s a scorcher in Phoenix today. I wish we were in the Canadian Rockies right now instead. Thanks Asshole Scott.”

1. What an asshole, amirite? Just rubbing it in like that? ︎

The post Asshole Scott appeared first on rscottjones.

There was a point, however, right around the time that ZenHabits.net and other minimalists were ascendant in the blogosphere, where I got into minimalism. I was already rather anti-consumerism, so this was probably a more natural default for me anyway.

During that period, I purged more than 50% of the things I owned, and even spent a couple days perfecting a 100 Things list to help re-orient my brain towards only keeping what was necessary. Of course, I actually owned waaaaay more than 100 things—I’m certain I had more than 100 things of ASU Football memorabilia alone—but it was a good exercise nonetheless. Being a backpacker probably helped in all of that; you don’t really need much to live.

These days, however, I’ve probably swung back in the other direction. First, I now have enough money to solve convenience problems by buying things, which is, admittedly, much better than the alternative. I’ve also evolved on how I think about these sorts of things. I have fewer of the extraneous things that I once owned, but I probably still own the same number of total items.

My goal now is to reduce friction in the things I want to do, not necessarily to own the fewest things.

For me, that often means purchasing duplicates of things I already own, simply so they can remain in a ready-to-go kit to make things quicker and easier—especially around camping and travel.

For instance, I have a whole slew of charging adaptors and cords stashed away in each bag I use (and in each car, too) so that I never have to worry about grabbing a random cord to charge something before I leave the house. I even have a dedicated charging kit for the tent, so I can just grab that as we head to bed during a trip. Stuff like this seems a bit silly, but when you add up all these little improvements, it ends up making a surprisingly significant difference.

Similarly, I have multiple fully-stocked toiletry bags to match different trip types. One is a very lightweight ”short hotel trip” bag with only a few essentials, geared towards just a long weekend away that involves flying and staying in hotels or at a friend’s house (and that fits into a small personal item or carry-on).

And I have a more meaty camping road trip toiletry kit, which includes additional items, like what I’d need to shower at a campground, that is also big enough to accommodate additional items I’m more likely to need on a longer trip (like my beard trimmer and razor).

All I need to do is to grab the appropriate toiletry kit, add in the RX pill case for the scheduled duration (yes, I have several of these ready to go too!) and I’m ready to go. Easy peasy.

All of these kits means I do in fact, own lots of things, even if a whole bunch of it are simply multiples of the same general stuff. Far more than a minimalist could own. But that’s more than fine with me.

The post Reducing friction through duplicative purchases appeared first on rscottjones.

As I started my national parks quest, I naturally spent some time in each visitor center bookstore, which nearly always included one or more Falcon Guides for the park or surrounding area. I’d pick up a book here or there, figuring that it’d come in handy for planning my current visit, as well as future adventures. They also served a bit as souvenirs, little reminders on my bookcase of a cool-ass place I had visited.

The consistent design of the spine makes a collection of them look great on a bookshelf, and after collecting a dozen or so of the books, it became a bit of a tradition to pick up a new book whenever I visited a park or region I expected to return to. They weren’t always the best guidebook for the park or region, but they were the ones I’d buy anyway.

We also started to log our hikes in each of the books—just a quick note of the date and who participated. And when my ex-wife and I got engaged at the shoreline of Shoshone Lake in Yellowstone National Park, we recorded the GPS coordinates, too.

By the time my ex-wife and I split up, I had filled two full bookshelves of Falcon Guides. The collection looked great, and guests would scan through the titles, often running a finger across the spines. I was pleased; it was a fun thing to own. I nearly considered office decor, the way an attorney might in having a nice set of law books adorning their credenza.

Quite a bit of time has passed, however, and I’ve only added one or two books since then. And I’ll admit that it’s been ages since I’ve actually relied on the information in any of the books. As much as I prefer traditional guidebooks to the crowd-sourced subscription alternatives (looking at you, AllTrails), too many things could have changed—such as wildfire damage or new public lands pass requirements—to not consult a more recent source of information.

I’ve been reorganizing our charging station and the area where I store all the various cords, battery packs, chargers, and other electronic accessories we have. And it’s clear that I need some more space to accommodate that burgeoning assortment of stuff. So I started eyeing those two shelves of Falcon Guides, which occupy prime real estate. I don’t really need these anymore, I tell myself. They’re a relic of a previous era of my life. I should finally bite the bullet and get rid of them.

But before purging all of these books, I sought to memorialize the memories they represented. So I flipped through each of the pages of each of the books, transcribing any hike logs and notes I found in my personal memories vault, along with title, author, and edition. I also pulled off the custom nameplate sticker—containing my name, email, phone, and address—that I had added to each of them (I often played there role of “outdoor library” for my friends).

I’m a sentimental guy, so it’s been a trip going through all those old memories. I’ve gotten distracted many times reliving old hikes and cherished trips. Just leaning back and letting the memories wash over me. Smiling at the good memories, and frowning at the hikes I had always anticipated getting to, but haven’t—yet, at least (and yes, I also logged all of the hikes I had flagged in each book). And I spent some time simply remembering the role this whole endeavor has played in my life.

Preparing to purge these books has been surprisingly difficult. I guess I hadn’t considered what an important phase of my life they represented. And while I’m certainly not losing that part of my life—I have many new hikes and new trips in my future—it does feel like I’m closing the door on a previous era of my life. One that helped define my life’s general direction.

I’m still keeping about a dozen of the guides, for various reasons. But I’m ready to donate almost 50 of them. It’s the end of an era, for sure.

One final note.

I had forgotten how many of these books included messages of advocacy, especially around wilderness and the value of public lands. From that first Hiking Arizona book, for instance, here’s a foreword by former Sec. Bruce Babbitt (a board member of my former employer, the Conservation Lands Foundation), along with an ode to wildlands and the 1990 Arizona Wilderness bill, which set aside millions of acres of BLM land as wilderness, and a list of hiking clubs and conservation organizations.

The post I’m finally purging my Falcon Guides appeared first on rscottjones.

Our big remaining trip this summer is the Canadian Rockies in August. I’ll drive from Phoenix and pick up Jen in Calgary, then drop her off in Seattle a couple weeks later and make my way back home. ASU Football season starts in the fall, which limits our weekend trips, though I expect we’ll take a shorter international trip during breaks in October or November. Our two main summer trips were roadtrips in OH-PA-NY-ME-WV-KY-IN and UT-ID-MT-WY. We also flew to MI for a funeral.

I’ve been working on a number of web projects, though can’t report on any of those. The big two web goals for the rest of the year are transitioning both this site and GoQuesting.com to Kirby 5. To quote the last /now update, which remains generally current:

I’m working on a full design of my website—yep, this one right here—that will transition it from WordPress to Kirby. It’s a big undertaking, in large part because I have to learn Kirby and enough PHP and CSS to make it work, as well as somewhat manually repost all the posts, pages, and photos. But I’m excited about it, as I think it’ll be a much better solution overall, and I think it’ll help me post more regularly about our adventures.

Which brings me to another big project that I’m similarly excited about—transitioning the Go Questing website from Notion/Super to…you guessed it…Kirby. That’s right, after several years of hiatus, I’m finally getting a chance to get back to his half-completed project. With dedicated pages for more than 1500 different quests, and another 300 or so waiting to be published, this will be an even larger and more complicated transition. And I still have plenty of work to do in building out many of these existing pages, too.

In addition, I’m working on plans to convert this entire effort into a stand-alone nonprofit, which of course involves far more work than just the quest directory website.

We’re currently in the process of several home renovations, mostly notably replacing our windows and getting new window treatments (finally! We’ve needed to do this for years and years and years). We’re also working on repairing our back wall, and building out a shade structure for the backyard. I’m never a fan of home projects, but I think each of this will have a material impact on our enjoyment.

The post July 13, 2025 appeared first on rscottjones.

I don’t know how to run a community forum in this future. I do not have the time or emotional energy to screen out regular attacks by Large Language Models, with the knowledge that making the wrong decision costs a real human being their connection to a niche community. I do not know how to determine whether someone’s post about their new bicycle is genuine enthusiasm or automated astroturf. I don’t know how to foster trust and genuine interaction in a world of widespread text and image synthesis

I’m not sure how ANY large, open social media platform can deal with LLM signups, or content—at least in real time. The fact that soooo many people have come to rely on these platforms, which are effectively the worst possible way to design effective distribution of trusted knowledge, might be humanity’s biggest self-own ever.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of online social communities. But cramming everyone into a single social media platform isn’t necessary. And I think we’ve come to discover that it’s not exactly a good idea, either. It’s hard to look past the misinformation, the radicalization, the attention-seeking, the user addiction. Especially when the mega-companies that run these are thoroughly enmeshed in enshittification cycles. After all, you are the product they’re selling.

Besides, we already had a global social network; it’s called the World Wide Web. It worked great! And it still does. (You should have a website; go on, go grab one right now.) It accomplishes everything you need for a social existence online. The interoperability so many folks are looking for is already present on the web; it’s always been there. But I digress…

Back to the quote above. Aphyr is worried that LLMs are better able to avoid the usual traps set by moderators in preventing spam accounts. I can sympathize; nearly all small communities are under resourced and most moderators are volunteers.

But I’m still very bullish on these exact kind of communities. I think small, niche-based social communities will continue to be the very best kind of online communities. In spite of our brief diversions into mega-platforms, they have always been the best, and I don’t see how that will change.

That’s because they’re the most focused on actual communities of interest—that’s literally why people join them. They’re human-scale. They foster relationships. They generate shared history, inside jokes, and treasured traditions. They build trust among members. They’re designed around the needs of the members, not those of a corporate superpower. And they’re not tied to a particular tech platform; if their current environment erodes, they have enough social cohesion to escape lock-in and move elsewhere, together.

There are plenty of ways to avoid spam signups in small communities like these.

The easiest, and perhaps the best, is to charge some sort of fee to join, or for posting privileges. The added benefit, of course, is that members help support the group they care about. Previous generations called these types of arrangements “clubs.” Yeah, nothing earth-shattering in this model, in spite of how many people naturally recoil after decades of “free” (read: very, very far from free) apps.

Another option is to only allow new signups from people who are referred by other members. I used this method for the first version of OnePhoto.Club (which worked great as a small closed community, but failed when I moved it to the more open and interoperable “social web”). The obvious downside here is that it adds a barrier to for anyone who randomly stumbles on a community they want to join. But in practice, I don’t think this has much negative impact. Most people discover these communities from someone else, whom they can simply ask for access. Or, as I did, you can offer an alternative process to join that an interested party can request. This added step seemed to keep out the spammers.

Since scalable growth is not the end goal of these communities, you don’t need to make joining 100% frictionless. Indeed, sometimes having a bit of friction to joining is a feature, not a bug. These communities are about quality, not quantity, after all. In fact, there’s often a sweet spot for community size; getting “too big” is definitely a possibility. But that size allows you to engage in whatever “hard to scale” activities you might think up—including entirely offline ones. To that point, a much-experienced lesson of small communities is that running the latest tech isn’t a factor in success; it’s all about the people who engage in the community, not the tech they use to engage.

So, no. The future of forums most certainly does not have to be lies.

And in spite of Ben’s concern that “for individual, niche communities maintained by enthusiasts and hobbyists, that may be the beginning of the end,” I don’t buy it. Not one bit.

Small, niche communities maintained by enthusiasts and hobbyists will continue to prosper. Why? Because they remain the best communities. They may not be on Mastodon, or a corporate platform like Facebook, but they can thrive and prosper as they always have in their own little corner of the web.

This post is part of #JulyReply2025.

The post Re: The Future of Forums is Lies, I Guess appeared first on rscottjones.

Why all the local museums? Well, it’s mostly due to being stuck in town on the weekend and Jen’s “Museums of Metro Phoenix” quest (no link yet, though we’re currently building her a website to track this stuff!).

Sunnyslope Historical Society Museum

Sunnyslope is a neighborhood in Phoenix on the south side of North Mountain and Shaw Butte. Disconnected from Phoenix by miles of open desert, it originated as a camp for tuberculosis sufferers, and grew into a more formal community when a local church built the Desert Mission for sufferers in the late 1920s. After four failed attempts at incorporation, it was eventually engulfed by the ever-expanding metro area via annexation into the City of Phoenix in 1959. The area was a happening spot for some time, but then fell into a bit of disrepair as other parts of the Valley prospered, only to see a small but growing “trendy” resurgence more recently.

The museum itself is located in a small relocated historic building that was among the very first drive-thru drugstores in the state. After a knock on the locked door, we were let in by a young woman, amidst apologies for all the papers and boxes strewn about the middle of the floor. At age 25, she is regarded as the youngest museum director in the country.

She explained that a local historian had recently died, and his heirs had just sent over a large shipment of his personal collection for her to sort and re-distribute to appropriate institutions. It was only a fraction of the total to be sent, so the museum would be closing for the entire summer just to process everything.—and hence why the door was locked when I had arrived. Apparently, the archives of the Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame would be included in the donated collection.

It reminded me of how so much of our historical archives are preserved not because we’ve collectively invested in formally preserving our history, but because a small ad hoc group of committed folks proactively took it upon themselves to do so. It’s primarily a grassroots affair, only occasionally bolstered by a government grant or program or corporate donation.

The museum itself is a rather informal affair, what you’d expect of a small community history museum. There are some small display cases with various knickknacks of the times, donated by individuals and worked into some sort of themed collection. And there are posterboards on the walls, offering a smattering of historic black-and-white photos whose captions act as the primary interpretation, all held in place with clear pushpins.

Remarkably, the museum actually rotates exhibits, a rare feature for a small, vastly underfunded museum like this one. The museum director explained what she had in mind for next year’s exhibits. One of them, a historical photo collection related to Salt River Recreation—a longstanding tubing concessionaire that operates on the Lower Salt River where I often go kayaking—sparked my interest, and got us chatting about it and other historic preservation topics, including our Ahwatukee History project. By then, it was time to move on for lunch. But I’ll be back to see those Salt River photos.

Phoenix Fire’s Historic Station 8

After lunch, we headed south towards the Willo neighborhood of central Phoenix to visit a historic fire station, which acts as its own museum for the Phoenix Fire Department. Open only by request, we were greeted by an on-duty firefighter at our agreed upon time for what was essentially a free private tour. The building itself is located at the edge of a normal residential neighborhood. Indeed, if you ignore the oversized garage doors and the fire department decor, it could easily pass for a normal home. It was built in 1942 and operated until the early 1990s.

And inside, it sort of is a home, of course. The main exhibit space is in what you’d call the living room, with a small kitchen and dining room off to the side. The main room was a mismatch of historical items, dominated by a wall of photos showing the firefighters who had lost their lives on duty, as well as two older desks with stacks of files and papers and sporting a computer (think what you’d see as a 1980s police detective’s desk on tv, but with a computer). There was some firefighting equipment on the floor next to one of the display cases in the middle of the room, a recent donation from the kids of a longtime Phoenix firefighter.

We also toured the rest of the station, which included a locker room, restrooms, a large open dormitory, and a communications room. And, of course, the bay—which was dominated by a large historic firetruck.

The museum is an interesting endeavor. It’ll never be a “real” museum, with standardized archival practices and such, but it’s very much a historical collection of everything related to the Phoenix Fire Department. Our guide, Jim, seems to be a major catalyst for this whole enterprise. In fact, it became apparent that quite a bit of the information in this museum was researched, not collected over time. It’s a relatively recent project; Jim spoke several times on research he had conducted to add more depth to the basic facts they had. Again, I think that speaks to the important role of historical advocates—how many of these stories would be lost without various Jims helping to keep them alive?

Chandler Museum’s exhibit on Gila River

The Chandler Museum’s primary exhibit space offers a rotating exhibit. Right now, the primary space is occupied by Gaman: Enduring Japanese American Internment at Gila River, which runs through February 2026.

We’re quite familiar with this story. In fact, after stumbling on the Butte and Canal camps that comprised the Gila River “War Relocation Camp,” we took it upon ourselves to visit all ten of the major internment camps, plus some ancillary sites as well. As familiar as we are, I wanted to stop in and see if there were any additional details that we didn’t know about or historic photos that we hadn’t seen before.

What it looked like, versus what remains today:

Surprisingly, the exhibit delivered a few interesting tidbits that we hadn’t heard about. And it offered a number of historical photos (with National Archives references!) that were new to me. So, mission accomplished!

Nozomi Park

We noticed a reference to an interpretative display at a nearby city park, so we decided to stop by to take a look on our way home. Near the park’s baseball fields—the closest ones to where the Gila River camp was—is a prominent five-sided interpretative panel. It does a good job of detailing the broad history of the Gila River episode, from the initial executive order to the aftermath of the camp’s closure. A little league game was in progress during our visit, and I imagine this is the first significant exposure that many kids and parents might have had on this—even though the “exclusion line” ran through the metro area, separating the state into “free to stay” and “forced into relocation camps” sections.

The post A weekend of local museums appeared first on rscottjones.

There are a bunch of new changes at my wife’s work, which we’re doing our best to navigate. Unfortunately, it’s going to severely limit our future travel, which is a huge blow to our life plans. I’m not sure what this looks like yet, but we’ll do our best to find some silver linings.

We’re approaching the year mark since my dad’s death. There are a number of things I still need to wrap up that I’ve dutifully avoided so far, such as purging his remaining possessions and cabinets of paperwork. I also need to better organize and archive the various photos and videos and other memories I have of him.

I’m working on a full design of my website—yep, this one right here—that will transition it from WordPress to Kirby. It’s a big undertaking, in large part because I have to learn Kirby and enough PHP and CSS to make it work, as well as somewhat manually repost all the posts, pages, and photos. But I’m excited about it, as I think it’ll be a much better solution overall, and I think it’ll help me post more regularly about our adventures.

Which brings me to another big project that I’m similarly excited about—transitioning the Go Questing website from Notion/Super to…you guessed it…Kirby. That’s right, after several years of hiatus, I’m finally getting a chance to get back to his half-completed project. With dedicated pages for more than 1500 different quests, and another 300 or so waiting to be published, this will be an even larger and more complicated transition. And I still have plenty of work to do in building out many of these existing pages, too.

In addition, I’m working on plans to convert this entire effort into a stand-alone nonprofit, which of course involves far more work than just the quest directory website.

I expect the above items to dominate the next half year.

The post April 29, 2025 appeared first on rscottjones.

After finishing my quest to visit every craft brewery in the state almost a decade ago, I usually rush to stay “completed” when new ones open. But these two opened during the height of covid and we decided to stay away for a bit. They sorta just sat on the back burner for awhile after that, always mentioned as a weekend option, but never quite making the cut for some reason.

Anyway, it was time to get them done, especially since this was one of the few campgrounds with availability after we got back from our big 100-day adventure. And as an added bonus, Jen would mark off Dead Horse Ranch, and we’d both be able to mark off Rockin’ River Ranch, a recently-opened state park not far away.

I also picked up a culture pass¹ for Arcosanti and made a tour reservation for our drive home on Sunday. So we’d finally be able to get that done for Jen’s Culture Pass quest. So while it might not be the most exciting of weekend trips, it was shaping up to be a productive one.

Friday night

We headed north after work on Friday, arriving around sunset to set up camp², then drove a couple miles into Cottonwood to grab dinner at Belfry Brewing. We ordered the two IPAs on tap, which (as expected) weren’t very good. But dinner was surprisingly excellent. We split a Detroit-style pepperoni pizza, and I added a caesar side salad too. We thoroughly enjoyed both and decided we’d return the following night for more—and this time, arrive a bit earlier to enjoy the live music that ends at 7pm. It was back to the campsite after that to enjoy the campfire for a bit before heading to bed.

Saturday

The following morning, we grabbed a quick coffee and breakfast on our way to Rockin’ River Ranch State Park, Arizona’s newest state park which opened last year. It’s been quite some time since I’ve marked off a state park on my Arizona State Parks quest, so it’d be good to get this one done while we were in the area.

As expected, the park isn’t especially interesting. A former working ranch, the land was acquired almost two decades ago, languishing under budget constraints and awaiting a plan for park development (and hopefully, more restoration) for most of that time. And you can see that in the visitor experience today.

The park includes about a mile stretch of the Verde River, with a handful of short trails and an interior that very much feels like an exhausted old ranch. We wandered the two trails close to the river, then moved along, confident that we’d never need to return (especially considering the $20 entrance fee). It’s really unfortunate that Arizona hasn’t invested better in its state park system, relying instead on nearby federal lands to bring in the tourism dollars.

Back at the car, we considered hitting Fort Verde State Historic Park or Jerome State Park to mark off another park for Jen, but in looking at the time, decided that it was best to head back towards Cottonwood instead—we wanted to visit Smelter Town Brewing, drive back to our campsite and possibly walk 2 miles to Belfry to get a seat and enjoy the live music, which starts at 4pm.

Smelter Town wasn’t quite open yet, so we decided to stop by the Clarkdale Historical Society Museum, a small building that overlooked the smelter that gave rise to the town. The museum isn’t much, but was worth a quick visit (I’d recommend pairing it with a stop at Jerome State Park too, which recounts the copper mine that led to the smelter). As we departed, we mentioned that we were heading next to Smelter Town Brewing, to which the docent smiled and said, “oh yeah, that’s the best thing in Clarkdale.”

Smelter Town Brewing is on the ground floor of a small historic hotel building, which still rents out rooms. We parked down the block and enjoyed passing some interesting brickwork and signs on our way there.

We arrived less than 30 mins after they had opened for the day and found only two empty seats anywhere inside. Apparently the docent’s assessment was correct. We wedged our way into a corner of the bar, spilling out into the walkway, and enjoyed a couple of pints each while we strategized about our travel options if Jen’s work schedule changed substantially. Per our tradition, we swapped glasses halfway through so we could each try all four brews we ordered.

The beer was certainly better than Belfry, but didn’t quite live up to the surprisingly lofty Untappd ratings I had seen. Nonetheless, we enjoyed our time there and would return.

From there we made our way back to Belfry, grabbed a table, ordered another pizza and salad (and a lackluster mushroom risotto), listened to the music (bleh, which was mostly country as opposed to the rock that had been played the night before). We eventually made our way back to the campsite for the night, enjoying some campfire time before snuggling into our respective sleeping bags.

Sunday

Sunday’s drive home would feature a tour of Arcosanti, an “urban experiment in arcology³” that is probably best described as an ecotopian hippie commune.

If you live in Phoenix, you’ve undoubtedly driven past the turnoff sign on I-17, perhaps wondering what it was. Or you knew someone who had bought their (semi-famous? locally famous? I’m not sure) wind chimes. Anyway, it’s an interesting—if far-fetched—story and experiment in rethinking how we could design small communities, and worthy of a stop at some point. Preferably using a free Culture Pass.

The site is adjacent to Agua Fria National Monument, so I had collaborated with residents there on related public lands and water issues, visiting the site a number of times for meetings and such. But Jen hadn’t been there yet and needed it for her Culture Pass quest, and this was a great time to get it done.

We got an email alert on Saturday that high winds were expected during our 11am tour—look, it’s always windy out on those mesas—and that we could come earlier for the 9:30am tour instead, or risk the elements and possible cancellation. We opted to keep the original time, and the winds weren’t a problem. I was surprised at how well attended the tour was, though several people clearly showed up with big cameras just to take photos.

Because of the tour time, we arrived home a bit earlier than we normally would, which gave us a chance to organize an afternoon get together with friends at our local brewery, which had a new beer release we wanted to try.

A quality weekend away

All in all, it was a relaxing and productive weekend away. We felt a bit out of sorts camping for the first time since the fall (our various systems are still in a bit of disarray), but I’m sure that’ll change soon—we have long weekend trips planned for the next month or so.

I’m hoping to get back to more regularly posting about our adventures, both big and small—but no promises.

1. Culture Passes are free admission tickets for two people to select cultural attractions around the state that you “check out” from the local library. ︎
2. I somewhat infamously rarely get to camp before sundown, so Jen usually doesn’t see where we’re camping until the sun comes up the next morning. Well, this time, we arrived just in time to get the tent up before sunset. ︎
3. Arcology “is a field of creating architectural design principles for very densely populated and ecologically low-impact human habitats,” according to wikipedia. ︎

The post A questing weekend in Cottonwood appeared first on rscottjones.