I feel like a broken record every time I say this, but 2025 was a year unlike any other that I have experienced in my life. Filled with new and exciting adventures that I never in a million years thought I would experience.
The year started with us heading to Cripple Creek, CO, to visit the Ice Castles in January. The trip was not without its drama as Brandy had an unexpected illness upon our arrival that nearly saw us taking her to an ER but she stabilized and we chalked it up to altitude sickness. (We would later find out that we both wound up sick with e. coli…)
Anyway, the Ice Castles were fantastic, as was Rita the Rock Pusher, a wonderful sculpture by Danish artist Thomas Danbo.
Shortly after our return from that trip, we picked up a new (to us) car, trading in the Nissan Quest we’d purchased the previous October. It was a rattle-trap, uncomfortable and just didn’t live up to expectations. We stuck with the Ford family, coming home with a 2018 Explorer. It’s served us well since.
For Brandy’s birthday, we (un)surprisingly headed back to Colorado for her birthday trip, this time finding us in Montrose for 2 weeks. While in the area, we also visited Telluride, Ridgway and Ouray for the first times, and, after Christy joined us for a bit on the trip, made the drive to Crested Butte/Gunnison, then we took her to Telluride so she could experience it.
In the spring, we thought, “Wouldn’t it be a lark if we bought a 38 foot fifth wheel RV and retrofitted the truck with a gooseneck ball in the bed to haul it around in?” Spoiler alert: it was NOT, in fact, a lark…
In April, Brandy took Ash and I to Spartanburg, South Carolina, to visit her property there. The only three notable events for me from that trip were:
- The drive down where we were pounded by an absolute deluge of rain that wound up flooding much of the areas we drove through,
- The facility she had gone there to visit. It was formerly an assisted living facility that was being converted to a multi-family complex and in its then-current state, was chock full of spooky liminal spaces, and
- My drive to Charlotte, North Carolina to meet my lead, Andrew, for lunch, during which I got to try Carolina-style barbecue.
Aside from that, it was a pretty low-key trip.
We Tried RVing
Our first trip in the RV took place after our return from South Carolina, when we spent a rain-soaked week on Lake Wapello, getting used to the ins and outs of living in an RV. It went fine but being stuck in an RV for a week while it rained pretty much the entire time was a tad claustrophobic for me.
After a couple of quick trips, including a trip to Omaha to visit the Henry Doorly Zoo and a solo trip into Des Moines for an Iowa Cubs game, we took our second trip in the RV, this time to Backbone State Park. We’d visited Backbone before and loved it, so we thought what better place to take the camper for a second trip.
It was a mess. Brandy was sick the entire time, the Starlink was an absolute nightmare, I had issues getting the trailer hooked back up to the truck at the end of the trip… I decided that this life wasn’t for us so we decided after that trip that we were going to sell it.
The Stadium Chase Begins
My grandmother died in February, while we were in Telluride. We knew it was coming so it wasn’t a big surprise, and, at the risk of sounding like an awful person, I was relieved. Relieved that she no longer had to suffer the life she’d been living for the last decade or so.
The service had been pushed to the summer due to health complications that my parents experienced right around the same time so my next “adventure,” and I hate calling it an “adventure” as I originally was there for a funeral, but I headed out to southern California. While there, I went to a Dodger game, my first in, like, 20 years, and got to catch up with some family I hadn’t seen in a while. Getting back home was a hassle but hey, I made it after all, that’s what counts.
Mere days after returning from that trip, Brandy and I headed to Kansas City for a Dodger game at Kauffman Stadium, so, my second Dodger game in less than a week, and in two different time zones. But it wouldn’t be the last!
While in Kansas City, I also visited a handful of museums and got to try KC style barbecue too!
And then… we embarked on another wild, months-long summer adventure.
Escaping the Corn Sweat Summer Tour
After our four-month-long summer tour from 2024, we would be hard pressed to follow that up with a comparable outing in 2025, though we did try our best.
Our summer started with a couple of weeks in Salida, Colorado right on the Arkansas River. We took plenty of hikes and some day trips out to Canon City, Buena Vista, and St. Elmo before heading on to our next stop (our Salida trip was so jam-packed with fun, I broke it up into two posts, Part One and Part Two.)
Our next stop on this adventurous Summer Tour was a trip over Cottonwood pass for a weekend in Gunnison that saw us also visit Crested Butte (duh!), Tin Cup, Gothic, and Ohio Pass.
After the quick weekend on the Western Slop, we headed back over Monarch Pass into Walsenburg, home of the world-renowned Christy. The first half of our week there was rather uneventful, but that Thursday, I drove north to Denver, meeting my dad for my THIRD Dodger game of the season, in my THIRD stadium of the summer, in THREE different time zones. A hell of an accomplishment for me!
We finished our week in Walsenburg with an adventure to Crestone, a hub for all kind of religious and spiritual belief systems. I absolutely ADORED the stuff I saw there!
From Walsenburg, we headed to the northwest corner of the state, landing Fruita where we headquartered for for two weeks, stopping at Rifle Falls on the way. I hit a couple of museums while we were there, we took a trip to Montrose, and we drove through the nearby Colorado National Monument, but the pièce de résistance was our trip to Moab and Arches National Park.
The red sandstone landscape was a perfect precursor to my upcoming birthday trip portion of the larger journey. I was in awe and wonder the entire time we were in the park, even if it was a bazillion degrees that day.
Between Fruita and our next stop in Fredonia, Arizona, we made pit stops at Four Corners Monument and Monument Valley, home to some of the most recognizable landscapes in cinematic history.
On our way out of the area, we also stopped by Horseshoe Bend, an iconic bend in the Colorado River before heading to Fredonia.
During our time on my birthday trip, we got to visit Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, thus, after Arches, checking three of Utah’s Big 5 National Parks off of our lists, each of which varying wildly in atmosphere.
Zion took a LOT out of me, logging over 18,000 steps that day. By the end of it, I was taxed and it took a full day of rest to recover.
I also hiked part of the Wire Pass Trail which was the trail that sparked my interest in visiting the area in the first place, after having seen a YouTube creator hike the trail years prior.
We finished our Summer Tour off with our annual visit to Albuquerque for my requisite stockpiling of green chile before trying to head home.
Brandy’s appendix had other thoughts about that though. An emergency surgery meant we had an additional week on the road, stuck in Wichita, Kansas as she recovered enough for the last of the drive home.
Leaving the Country
Extending our Summer tour by a week meant that upon our return home, we would have four days to unpack from nearly two months on the road and re-pack for a four day getaway in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, for Blue October’s inaugural Into The Ocean Getaway.
The long weekend in Mexico was chock full of adventure, including the stay at an all-inclusive resort, a wonderful spa experience, an ATV adventure (for me at least, Brandy couldn’t go because of her recent surgery), wonderful food, lots of drink, and of course, three, count ’em, THREE Blue October shows on the sand with the waves of the Pacific Ocean crashing behind us.
Upon our return, delayed again by DIA, the adventures didn’t stop there. The very next weekend, I took a trip up to Des Moines for Evil Dead In Concert, followed by a return to the very same venue less than three weeks later with Sue to see Blue October (again).
For my ACTUAL birthday, we went back to the Pacific Northwest, spending a week and a half in Cannon Beach, where our 2024 Summer Tour kicked off. While there, I headed in to Seattle to visit the end-users I support at work for some face-to-face one-on-one time.
I always love the Pacific Northwest, especially when it’s gloomy and rainy, like it was the whole time we were there.
After a SNAFU (and I do mean SNAFU in it’s most literal sense… Situation Normal: All Fucked Up) that had Brandy trying to fly in to Peoria after a last minute trip back to San Diego that saw her rerouting through O’Hare, she finally made it to Peoria for the last adventure of the year, seeing Blue October once more.
Final Thoughts
I’m starting to have trouble coming up with the right words to convey the emotion and exuberance I feel when we are out adventuring. Every time I see a new sight, or try a new food, or do something new, or learn something I never knew before, it simply reminds me of just how grateful I am for the opportunities we have been given, to be able to thrive in ways I never thought possible.
At the end of 2019, when planning this blog, I was hopeful to be able to leave the state (New Mexico) at some point in the near future. Now, here we are, six years later, I’ve not only shattered the state line (not to mention I don’t even live in that state any more) but have visited 26 states in that short amount of time. And when I say “I visited”, I mean I got out of the car and intentionally did something, whether it was something as elaborate as visiting as National Park, or a landmark like Niagara Falls or the Baseball Hall of Fame, or even something as simple as going specifically for a meal, like heading to North Carolina for Carolina-style barbecue. This is the say nothing of the countless other states the rubber on the car touched asphalt. If we counted those, we could tack on another 13 states, but I’m not counting those yet, not until I do something in those states.
2026
And the year ahead will already see us knocking at least one of those states off the list. We already have a trip to Minneapolis planned to visit the Mall of America on January 1 (what a way to ring in the new year, eh?) and I’m starting to do some research into visiting western Kansas (specifically Dodge City) at some point this year.
Oh, yeah, and we’ve also paid for and are planning on going to Blue October’s next getaway… in Portugal in June… and their return to Cabo in September.
So not only have I crossed state lines, I’ve left the country, and as of June, I will be able to say that I left the continent.
But that’s a story for next year.
-Phil