When we first purchased the Vistabule our friend Jim Grace asked if we were making plans for a Butter Tour. I was not familiar with this term so Jim explained; when traveling either by land or sea one should carry a stick of butter, when the butter begins to melt it’s time to move north and when the butter begins to harden it’s time to move south. Yep, that’s our kind of travel.

While we are presently in the San Francisco Bay Area our official Butter Tour will begin in mid February.  The first half of February will find us  “down under” visiting our daughter Abby and afterwards we will start our National Park tour at the two parks in Southern California; Joshua Tree and Death Valley. We want to remain in Southern California until mid-March as Stephen has his eye on the second round of the World Baseball Classic games in San Diego. At the end of March we hope to boondock near Yuma Arizona on BLM land; this off-grid experience will allow us to test our recently acquired solar panels. April will see us moseying towards Utah so we can explore the Mighty Five; Arches, Bryce, Zion, Canyonlands, and Capitol Reef. Of course there will be variables and we will adjust while keeping a close eye on our butter stick.

As an aside, Stephen’s retirement lasted only 24 hours. Last November he applied for a job in guest services with the Minnesota Twins and he received an offer earlier this week. The Twins play 81 home games but Stephen is only required to work 35 games a season. This will allow us plenty of time to continue our exploration.

I have some great hikes and restaurant suggestions for Santa Cruz but this blog is already too long….I’ll write about them next time.