My anger at not being able to find packing peanuts at the fucking post office stiffened my limbs and overtook the space in my head that previously held excitement about our upcoming road trip. I have no excuses for why I waited to go to the post office until the day we were leaving. But I knew it would be terrible, so I kept putting it off. Plus, I wasn’t totally sure that I wanted to pay $100 (with insurance) to mail my violin to my parents’ house where we’ll be able to pick it up before the final move to NYC. A large part of me wanted to sell it for the cash. But at the last minute, I decided to go ahead and mail it. I was happy with my decision until that moment in the post office. I only needed a small bag of peanuts to finish the job… and after going to 2 nearby stores and coming up empty, I had to settle for $14 worth of bubble wrap. Procrastination always costs you.

I didn’t know how to overcome my anger though. It was just a little thing, but we had so much to do before setting off on the road that any wasted time just sucked the joy right out of me. Funny enough, the only thing that helped me turn the corner was when I started thinking about how I would tell the story here on my blog. It gave a purpose to the shittiness. And little by little, my blood returned to normal temperature, and I could breathe again.

Luckily, we got through the rest of the morning relatively unscathed as we packed up the car and finished last minute errands.

In the early afternoon, we left Tucson and headed to our first campsite just south of the Grand Canyon. It was a 10 acre plot of land back 5 miles on dirt roads that can’t be navigated by GPS even though there is cell phone service. We could see in every direction for miles which of course gave us phenomenal views. Unfortunately for us, it was a very windy and rainy day/night. And with no hills or trees to block it, our tent was pounded throughout the night. We hardly slept, and I don’t think our dog, Domino, slept a wink. On top of that, she woke us from our light slumber at 4am because she had to puke. It was a long night. But the clouds and rain did give us some gorgeous views that made it all worthwhile. 

This picture makes it seem way calmer than it actually was. We were being pelted by wind and rain pretty much the whole night.

Somehow, we kept high spirits, packed our shit up in the morning and drove to Flagstaff. It seems counterintuitive to skip the Grand Canyon when we have a National Parks pass and are planning to hit up numerous parks and forests, but being Arizonans, we’ve been there and done that. And once you’ve seen it, there are way cooler things to use your time to go see. So we passed it by and headed to Lake Powell for an afternoon dip.
*** So of course, after I wrote this post and made final edits, WordPress somehow glitched and erased my finalized version, 😡 giving me yet another opportunity to practice my anger management skills. Lucky for me, I have this blog to express my frustrations on! Thanks for reading! And maybe this re-finalized version is actually better… Maybe.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider donating to our “Camping across the country” fund. My final  teaching paycheck got delayed (because of course it did), and these donations have kept us afloat. We are so incredibly thankful to all of you! Even if you can’t donate, thanks for reading and following this blog. 

Special shout out to Morgan Brown and Beth Brown who were the very first people to donate and help make this trip more doable! We are grateful and so is Domino.