New Mexico Sabbatical 2022
It's been more than 40 days since I last posted, which I believe is the longest gap since the start of this journal. The prior record holders were:
- 36 days when I went to Europe on my sabbatical.
- 24 days when our daughter was born.
This time around, we went with travel. I had earned a second sabbatical back in 2019, but the pandemic followed by a baby delayed actually using that until this year. I tacked a bunch of vacation on to the four weeks of sabbatical, and we headed out on a long road trip on August 25. We returned home to Ohio on September 30, and I go back to work tomorrow.
Our sabbatical had four major portions:
1. A road trip to New Mexico - We mostly just drove all the way to Los Alamos, New Mexico, with some touristy stuff and visits along the way.
2. Housesitting in Los Alamos - We took care of a house on mesa for more than two weeks, with plenty of tourism and friends in the area.
3. National Parks of Southern New Mexico - We visited three national parks in the south of New Mexico over several days.
4. The road home. We took a leisurely drive back with extended stops to visit people in Dallas, St. Louis and Columbus. Along the way I recompleted the MLB Stadium Tour.
With a toddler, we by necessity didn't go as fast and furious as I had in Europe. We tried to limit driving to 5-6 hours a day at most, and our hiking and other outdoor activities were less strenuous. However, we still had a fantastic time. In 37 days, we covered 5,891.1 miles across 8 states using 19 tanks of gas. We stayed at 12 AirBNBs and went to 5 zoos, 3 national parks and 2 botanical gardens. We even worked in some trivia.
Me being me, I've got detailed notes about the trip. It doesn't merit a day by day breakdown like my trip to Europe did, but I'll be doing some summary posts over the next several weeks using the new tag new mexico sabbatical 2022.
I've now driven across all of the states in the Central Time Zone in my life, all but one as an adult, so that's fun.
- 36 days when I went to Europe on my sabbatical.
- 24 days when our daughter was born.
This time around, we went with travel. I had earned a second sabbatical back in 2019, but the pandemic followed by a baby delayed actually using that until this year. I tacked a bunch of vacation on to the four weeks of sabbatical, and we headed out on a long road trip on August 25. We returned home to Ohio on September 30, and I go back to work tomorrow.
Our sabbatical had four major portions:
1. A road trip to New Mexico - We mostly just drove all the way to Los Alamos, New Mexico, with some touristy stuff and visits along the way.
2. Housesitting in Los Alamos - We took care of a house on mesa for more than two weeks, with plenty of tourism and friends in the area.
3. National Parks of Southern New Mexico - We visited three national parks in the south of New Mexico over several days.
4. The road home. We took a leisurely drive back with extended stops to visit people in Dallas, St. Louis and Columbus. Along the way I recompleted the MLB Stadium Tour.
With a toddler, we by necessity didn't go as fast and furious as I had in Europe. We tried to limit driving to 5-6 hours a day at most, and our hiking and other outdoor activities were less strenuous. However, we still had a fantastic time. In 37 days, we covered 5,891.1 miles across 8 states using 19 tanks of gas. We stayed at 12 AirBNBs and went to 5 zoos, 3 national parks and 2 botanical gardens. We even worked in some trivia.
Me being me, I've got detailed notes about the trip. It doesn't merit a day by day breakdown like my trip to Europe did, but I'll be doing some summary posts over the next several weeks using the new tag new mexico sabbatical 2022.
I've now driven across all of the states in the Central Time Zone in my life, all but one as an adult, so that's fun.