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The long way home endured, today I arrived.
First and foremost I would like to thank everyone who helped me along on this trip. Your thoughts, food, shelter, conversations will always remain something special in my heart, and I am very grateful. Leaving Tacoma six weeks ago almost seems like a lifetime ago. Montana, Yellowstone, even Minneapolis seems so far back. People have been asking me, "Where's the one place that stands out?" "What did you learn?" or "What are you going to do now?" The single most rewarding experience of this trip is having a better understanding of who I am. I made some ambitious goals when I left Tacoma, one being that I would figure out what I wanted to do with my life. But for a long time on the road I struggled in my inner dialog and found the difficulty was in not even knowing what really excites me, or what I love to do, or things I really believe. And so I daily challenged myself to find these things, and I now have a list of things I will do. All along this journey I have found inspiration: the man walking across America, in watching the landscape change in front of my very eyes, in feeling the weather, in feeling confident in my self-sufficiency. It has been an amazing transformational journey that I will always hold onto and will reflect back on for a long time. Thank you all for reading and being a part of this. I have enjoyed the comments, phone calls, text messages, emails, and am truly lucky to live in such a diverse circle of great loving people.
Happy Trails,
Kelly Totten
I think this trip is starting to catch up with me as evident from my day of doing absolutely nothing. I am reminded of my time backpacking in Europe and my last days in Paris. After a month of haphazard living, my friends and I found ourselves in one of the coolest cities in the world, but only able to muster the energy to change channels. Today I laid by the pool where I did some reading and writing and am finding myself in a different mindset. The rush is over, home is a quick two hour drive, the end is near and my body knows it. The furthest I traveled was down the street to get a latte.
I arrived in San Diego for the final leg of my trip. I met up with my friend Melanie and she took me down to the beach on Coronado island where we hung out and later ate dinner at a place called Miguel's which has bomb Mexican food. At this point of the trip I am beat tired and apparently am pretty worthless without a large dosage of caffeine. San Diego should be a very relaxing part of this trip full of beaching.
This is me asleep on a park bench.
After my usual scrumptrulescent breakfast of yogurt and granola bars Retta and I headed to the Salt River to do a five hour float. We heard rumor of the price to float and gathered the little cash we had and found out we were mistaken. In our best effort to be prepared, I think we walked back and forth from the car to the tube rental place like 5 times, had to drive 8 miles into town to find an ATM, and we're lucky we didn't lose her keys or for something else ridiculous to happen. On Saturdays, floating the Salt is the only thing to do because everyone in Phoenix was there, plus some guys from Oregon we met and some 'necks from 'Bama. The whole thing had a spring break feel to it... everything from drunks, to cliff jumpers, to drugs, to naked people, and I think that about covers it.
I enjoyed my hotel room until they kicked me out and I made my way towards Phoenix, AZ. I can tell I am getting closer to home because the Mexican food is getting better. My first stop was at a Men's Wearhouse where I think George Zimmer fitted me for a tux himself. This dude looked just like him. I eventually met up with my friend Retta from PLU who just moved back home to Phoenix post graduation and we did a self guided tour of the Totten Tubes Phoenix branch which I don't think I had ever seen. Her mom made dinner and later we walked around Arizona State University to find some nightlife at Border's bookstore followed by the worst margarita in the world ever at a place called "Margaritas". One would have higher expectation from a place named that.
Today I left Los Cruces, NM and made my way over to Tucson, AZ. Monsoon season has made travel a little slower than I would prefer but arriving safely is worth it. I pretty much just made the drive and only stopped to refill on coffee. I made it to Tucson and got a motel room where I spent the rest of the day reading, writing, getting some work done, hot tubbing, and a Real World marathon. Pretty laid back in comparison to other days but restful.
