Day Fourty-Seven

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

Day Fourty-Six

Alright, you just try and beat this day. I went down to the beach today where I spent about three hours. The waves were awesome so I had to do some body surfing. I caught some big ones and out rode some surfers. I think resting for the last two days was what I needed because I saw Journey at the Cricket Amphitheater in San Diego and rocked out the whole time. I am surprised I have any voice left. Cheap Trick and Heart opened up and then Journey brought the house down. They have this new lead singer who does not look Journeyish by any means, but the guy sounds exactly like Steve Perry. I was with a group of fun people and we had an awesome time. The only disappointment was during "Lights" (my favorite Journey song) which I spent in the bathroom line yelling at some dude for cutting.


Kelly's elemental waters.


Air guitar at the Journey concert.


Journey concert group pic: Brittany, Kelly, Melanie, Mike

Day Fourty-Five

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.

Day Fourty-Four

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.