Welcome
to the Out of Our Rut blog landing page.
Who we
are:
We are
a couple of former engineers that lived and worked in the Rochester
New York area for over 30 years. When we were laid off from two
different companies, one day apart, we took that as a sign to change
things up. We had built a beautiful home on 50 acres and loved the
place, but with plenty of time on our hands, we began to travel more
and realized that when we were on the road for weeks on end, we
didn't really miss all the “stuff” we had back home. Plus the
work involved with maintaining our home and property seemed to be the
only reason we would head back home. That prompted us to get out of
our rut and sell 95% of our possessions and our home and move into
our 38 foot motorhome and travel the country full time starting in
June of 2016.
 |
| Chris and Jack Hiking in Washington State |
 |
| At Pullout Along Rugged Oregon Coast |
Our
mission:
To
explore the country with a strong bias towards outdoor activities.
Our passions are hiking and geocaching with some mountain biking on
the side. I am an avid photographer. I guess working at Eastman Kodak
for 32 years had an influence in that. And while we live in a
motorhome and stay in many campgrounds, we really are not
campers. We seldom have campfires and don't have a corn hole game. We
rarely stay at a campground for its amenities. We pick a place that
is near where we want to explore. We think of it more like our home
happens to have wheels and can move around. Our desire in these
travels is to slow the pace. We didn't want to see if we could get to
all the National Parks as quickly as possible. We like to keep a
travel day to less than 200 miles and if the place warrants, stay for
a week or more.
 |
| At Geocaching Headquarters in Seattle for #10,000 |
The
blog:
For
friends and family (as well as us) to keep track of what we have been
up to, we have created this blog. It chronicles where we've been and
what we've done as we wander around the country. Each stop along the
way will, at minimum, get mentioned in the blog. Some longer stops in
areas we enjoyed may get multiple blog posts in order to give that
stop it's due. Generally the blog has lots of photographs as I find
it difficult to eliminate photos I like. The blog will talk about the
campground to some extent, but it shouldn't be considered a
campground review. We seldom seem to exhaust the things we want to
explore before we exhaust ourselves and need to move on. That means
we may completely skip some activities or places in an area that
others may consider essential. We look at that as a reason to come
back in the future.
 |
| Pretty Sunset in Quartzite Arizona |
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| At the Window in Big Bend National Park |
This
landing page:
The
problem with just about any blog is that fact it is chronological.
This is fine since that is how the events occurred in real life. But
since our blog is so much about a given location, it can be difficult
for somebody to find a specific blog post for a given location. I
even find it a challenge to remember when we happened to be at a
given location if I wanted to look something up. For instance, if
someone asked about Twin Falls Idaho. I know we stayed there but it
might take me awhile to figure out that we were there in June of 2017
to get them to the right post. If I could only look at a map of all the places we have stayed and have an easy way to get to the relevant blog post.
Since
I already use Google My Maps to keep track of our locations, I have
created a special map that has all of our stops since going full
time. None of the routes are included in the map since that just
seems to clutter it up and don't really add value. By clicking the link below the map, an
interactive map with all of our stops will open in another window. It
is then possible to move around the map and zoom in an area of
interest. Clicking on any pin on the map will pop up the name of the
location along with a link to the blog post(s) associated with that
stop. Since I am nearly always 2 to 4 weeks behind in the blog, some
of the most recent map points may not have a link to a blog, but they
will in time. The GREEN pins are locations that happen to include one of our annual or yearly reviews.
So if
you want to see what we found to explore in a given area, this should
provide a much easier way to find the blog post.
