I thought this might be a fun wrap-up of the summer, using just 10 photos. It’s really hard to select just one photo to represent our often extremely varied trips, but I gave it a shot anyway. So, here we go:
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.