The Times and Travels of Nolan
Documenting trips I've taken and places I've seen.
Home games are fun. Some home blowouts: 29. Oklahoma 56, West Virginia 14 – 2019 This was one of the dreaded 2019 Big Noon Kickoff games that people swear are part of the reason Oklahoma bailed for the SEC. And you know what, on that sleepy October afternoon, part of me may have been inclined …
Continue reading “Counting Down My Undergrad OU Games: 29-25 – Home Cooking”
This is becoming something of an annual feature for me as we get close to college football season. Nostalgia peaks in mid-August as I look back to some of the memorable times I had from 2016-2019 as an OU student, hoping that maybe I’ll catch some of that lightning in a bottle again. This year, …
Continue reading “Counting Down My Undergrad OU Games: 33-30 – Red River Fun”
2022 is my last-ever summer vacation, in essence. August 1 is (possibly was, by the time I finish this post – it’s July 31 as I write the intro) my first day at NWS Norman. From here on out, there’s no convenient 3 months off of being a student. I’m a little sad about that, …
It was a trip I’ll never forget. I don’t know how else to summarize the week and a half in Wyoming in August 2021. What started as an idea on a day where Elizabeth and I were snowed in in early February turned into the most-involved trip I’d ever planned. There were campground reservations to …
There’s a feeling that comes at the end of every trip that’s pretty much indescribable. Humans are hardwired to feel a sense of loss when something comes to an end, even if it’s a job they didn’t like, or someone they weren’t close with moving away. From a young age I felt that sense of …
There’s something to be said for the views along the drive to a place. I first came to love mountains when driving down to Florida with family for Spring Break. I would wait in anticipation for the moment we punched into the heart of the Appalachians in Tennessee. Over the years, I can remember being …
Drip, drip, drip. For the third consecutive morning, it was raining off and on at Canyon Village, with the result being a morass of wet tents, wet chairs, wet towels, wet decorations. Four days ago at Colter Bay, under much drier circumstances, Elizabeth and I had gotten into a vicious first fight of our engagement. …
About a hundred yards away, across an undulating field of yellowed scrub brush, a gray mound of rock belched forth steam in fits and bursts. The mound made no sound. Other than the steam, there was no indication that it was special. Except that in a 180-degree arc around it, people from across the world …
One last miserable meal inside Yellowstone. We’d been scraping the bottom of the rainy barrel for a couple of days. Many of the meals that Elizabeth and I had meticulously planned out, especially the ones where we’d planned on picnicking sandwiches and snacks, had not turned out that way. Instead, with Pam offering to pay …
The idea of relativity of time gets funnier the closer I get to this project. August 19th, 2021 feels like eons different than August 13th with the benefit of hindsight. That’s probably because I was blogging about August 13, and the first views of the Tetons, and how I felt pre-proposal, and all of that …
