There’s never a dull moment when you own/operate a Bed and Breakfast.  Trust me on this.  Last night I prepped a large baking dish of french toast souffle, (it has to refrigerate overnight) only to discover this morning that two of our guests left early.

As we ready (and steady) ourselves for the upcoming tourist season, which includes the baking of a gazillion cookies, I was reminded of a hilarious article I read on the Huff Post about stupid idiotic not so smart things people say when it comes to reviewing their travel experiences.

“One day I heard someone talking about ‘sifting sand’. I liked the sound of those words and scribble in my notebook ‘old man sifts sand’ tells stories…’ and forgot about it.

Then one day I was on a beach, watching the sand trickle through my fingers and thought, what if every grain held a story. And what if someone were able to tell those stories by sifting the sand?”  –   Wikiquote

We’re headed south of the border today, all the way south to San Bartolo, Baja.  We consider ourselves lucky in that we’ve twice been to Baja – Los Barrilles.

Every spring it’s the same thing – the onset of my love/hate relationship with this blossoming time of year – and it’s about to roll around again come Thursday, March 20.  The first day of spring 2014.  Yesterday, it hailed in southern Oregon.  Go figure.  Blossoms through the hail, it’s a symphony of contrasts.

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity…”  ~ John Muir

I am not someone who will sleep under the stars, or in a tent, or in a rustic cabin or go anywhere near anything that creeps, slithers, buzzes, flies, sneaks, spins a web, etc. but, I do absolutely love to be outside and I love to hike, as long as the hike doesn’t include me edging along some precarious cliff face because as I’ve mentioned before, I’m burdened with a wicked fear of heights.

It’s the stuff movies are made of. Monument Valley. The classic western hero riding his horse along the horizon, the magnificent sandstone buttes that must be seen to be believed and Yes!  There he his, John Wayne, on a 5-year quest; The Searchers.  Yep, it’s the stuff movies are made of.

There are days in this lifetime when you wonder – why did I get out of bed today and how fast can I go back to bed and pull the covers up over my head?  Today, was one of those days and I’m betting each of you reading this has endured similar moments. As they say, what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.

When we mapped out our See the USA road trip we never really focused on where we would stop or what we would see, rather it was more of a let’s see where the road takes us kind of thing.  As it turns out, the road led us to two fascinating moments in history that will forever be linked together; and both moments definitely still hold the fascination of many.

Around here, we use the month of February to ready ourselves – both personally and professionally – for our upcoming high tourist season.  Once we get rolling in the spring it becomes time-challenging to book appointments and such.  That’s not to say it can’t be done, it’s just much easier to get it out of the way, now, while we’re still moving slowly.  Included in this effort was my recent visit to my doctor for an annual exam.