My Nomad Journey – Washington to Arizona and Stops Along the Way

After Seattle, it was time to start making my way to the east coast. In this new chapter of nomad life, I’m not working on a specific plan or route like I did for the first 10 months. During that first journey, I had a plan to work my away around the country and planned to follow the seasons through the south and up to the north. Ultimately, I wanted to spend 10 months circling the country and landing back in Sacramento. Now that this experiment is done, I am free styling it. Rather than have a route and itinerary, I’m planning my travels around specific visits, work engagements, commitments and other milestones. So I won’t know where I will be at all times, but I do have specific milestones that require me to be in certain places at certain times – then I will build the rest based on that. For example, I promised my friend Jennifer I would house sit for her in Miami in November while she travels. So, I know I need to be in Miami for the first half of November. How and what route I take to get there is flexible. With this in mind, I left Seattle with a long-term destination in mind – Miami. I had about 3 weeks to get there and I wanted to spend time in Arizona and South Texas along the way.

This post is about my journey from Washington to Arizona and what I did between.

Here’s what I did:

I don’t really prefer to make long drives anymore. In the old days, and when I had far less flexibility due to my corporate jobs, I would gladly drive 12 hours if it would buy me more time in the destination. Nowadays, I would rather not drive for more than 6-7 hours, unless I have a good reason. I find that to be a good dose of driving and enjoying the scenery, when I’m on the open road between distant destinations.

I broke the drive between Seattle and Phoenix up into segments. First I stopped in Medford, OR again (same hotel) for the night. I stopped at my gym for a workout and planned to grab dinner from the vegan restaurant again, but they were closed. Bummer. I think I grabbed a bean burrito and called it a night.

The next leg was to drive from Medford to Fresno, with a stop in Sacramento to pick up some mail and swap a few things from my storage unit. On the way through the Mount Shasta area BEFORE getting to Sacramento, I took advantage of opportunities to stop at some scenic overlooks and see views of the volcano and mountains I had not allowed myself to stop for before. In Sacramento, there was no time for visits, since I wanted to be in Fresno before dark. I grabbed a quick lunch while there and hit the road. For those of you who don’t know northern California, it’s not just the Bay Area that has horrible traffic. In the Central Valley, the cities of Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto, Merced, and Fresno and Bakersfield are all linked by the Hwy 99 corridor. Aside from patches of farm land, the traffic on this freeway can thicken for hours as you go through one city after the next. When I left Sacramento, it was rush hour on a Friday. I ended up in heavy traffic for the entire 3+ hour drive to Fresno. No fun!

In Fresno, I checked into my motel and began the search for dinner. I have only driven through Fresno on the freeway before – never stopped and explored the city. I found a vegan restaurant downtown that was a family owned Mexican vegan restaurant! Comida Mexicana es mi favorito y es possible comerlo cada dia! (apologies for the lack of punctuation) By the way, I’m not vegan – but when I find a vegan restaurant, I’m guaranteed to find good plant-based food and protein options! This place was no exception. I had birria tacos, which is never an option for vegetarians in traditional restaurants. OMG! Awesome! Chips and salsa, other types of tacos. It was all greasy and good, made in traditional style. Such a treat.

The next day I traveled the last leg of the journey to Phoenix, AZ. This drive IS a long one – about 10 hours from Fresno to Phoenix. Aside from driving through Los Angelas metro, it is mostly a quiet drive. I’ve driven this route many times over the years and it is very familiar to me. I always enjoy driving through what we call “the grapevine”, the mountain range that separates the CA central valley from Los Angeles. You drive up and over for about an hour and a half, with mountain views and interesting scenery along the way. You also start to experience the traffic getting heavier and heavier as you approach the LA basin.

About halfway through the drive, I stopped in Tujunga, CA to get a workout at my gym and grab lunch. It was easy to marry those together and hit the road again. I surely appreciate having a national gym membership, because it not only lets me workout in most of the cities and towns that I stay in, but also gives me this option of breaking up drive days with a solid workout and some body movement, after sitting for long hours.

I arrived in Phoenix late in the evening – I had forgotten about the 1 hour time difference (losing an hour) between California and Arizona. I’ll continue that story in the next post! Over the course of 3 days, I drove 1,400+ miles.

Here’s what I learned: Something minor, but since resuming the nomad travels, I discovered audio books on YouTube for free. Actually, while looking for free audiobooks on Youtube, I discovered an author’s page who releases all his books onto his account. Many of them are series. (SciFi and Fantasy, in case you’re curious) I started bingeing his books and kept moving from book to book on these long drives. It was fun to get in the car and look forward to the continuation of a story, or the beginning of the next story. In the past, I have leaned on drive time as quiet time. I don’t like having more things to think about when I’m driving. But this has been really enjoyable.

Here’s what’s next: I’ve been sharing the same plans in each post and that continues.

• I’ll spend about a week with Shelly in Phoenix (Scottsdale), AZ
• From there I’ll move on to San Antonio for about a week, breaking up the drive with a one-night stay in El Paso
• After San Antonio, I’ll move on to Miami, but will need to break that drive up into at least 2 stops

As always, please interact with this post. I love getting your questions, your thoughts, and your comments. I’ll reply when I’m able.

Please enjoy yourselves in this week ahead and look for another update from me about the adventures of the journey. Be well my friends!

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