Adventures On the Road

It’s funny what a difference a change in scenery has on your mentality.

While trying to stay dry during a very soggy November and December in Seattle, you get used to constant cloud cover.  It’s expected really.  You start to make distinctions between heavy clouds, light cloud cover, and of course, rain clouds.  It could be misting outside, or it could be drizzling, sprinkling, light rain, and this Fall we saw constant consecutive downpour days.  This winter I was introduced to ‘Lumpy Rain’ as well, as the temperature fell and the rain clouds rolled in, it was just not cold enough to snow and instead produced raindrops with just a little bit of ice, making those raindrops fall just that much heavier.

Anyway, my point is that with so much weather that you’re trying to dodge throughout the day, it makes it difficult to get outside for that vitamin D your body craves, especially if you hate to walk around in the rain.  You become obsessive about the hourly weather forecast, trying to time your outdoor activities in between the 1 – 2 hour breaks from the rain during the day.  A glimpse of blue sky makes you giddy, and full out sunshine, well you barely have time to get your shoes on before your body is jumping outside and heading to the waterfront.  In Seattle, you take advantage of any non-rainy weather.  Period.

But what do you do when you find yourself in constant sunshine?  A place where the norm is sunshine and when a couple clouds find their way in the horizon, it’s a hot topic of conversation.  You find yourself indoors, that’s what!  You take that sunshine for granted and when you look outside and see bright sunshine and moonscape views, you think, ‘oh – another sunny day. It looks a little cool and breezy out though.  Maybe an inside day….’.  And when there are a couple clouds in the sky and surprisingly a few raindrops, well, it’s a HIBERNATION DAY.  Turn the fire on, grab the blankets and let’s watch a movie.  Where in one place the raindrops are the norm and their absence is an opportunity you take advantage of, in the desert, a few drops are cause for hibernation.

Well, today we made a trek out into the desert in the front yard.  A path of crumbling rock, sprouting cacti (and their skeletons) and the panoramic views from up above.