The Times and Travels of Nolan
Documenting trips I've taken and places I've seen.
Now that TORUS 2019 is 5 (wow) years in the rearview mirror, the memories are getting a little fuzzier. Some of the big days still live on in my memory and always will. May 25, 2019 will always have a historical footnote in the great 2019 tornado outbreak sequence – but that footnote occurred hundreds …
Continue reading “TORUS 2019: Water in West Texas (May 25, 2019)”
It’s a western thing: writing a letter into a nearby mountainside where it can be seen for miles and miles around. I’ve seen them before (especially in my family’s 2016 trip to southern Utah), but none so large as the Y on the east side of Provo. At 380 feet tall, the Y is longer …
Ever so slowly, I was acclimating to not being on midnight shifts. It helped immensely that we were on the West Coast a full two hours behind central time, but by Sunday, October 15 I actually felt sort of human. A long night of sawing logs (you’d have to be crazy not to be exhausted …
Not much happened over the past year, to be honest. I traveled to Washington, Colorado, Missouri, California, Wyoming, Colorado again, Iceland, Delaware, Michigan, Oregon, Utah, and Pennsylvania. I completed milestones in my first full year of my job – completing New Hire, RAC, issued my first severe thunderstorm warnings, worked through my first tornado outbreaks, …
Grey light filtered into the bedroom. For someone who spends as many nights as I do in different beds than my own, it was still a jolt to look around and try to remember where I was. After a moment, it flooded back: I was in an AirBNB in Provo, Utah, and today was my …
The quintessential Glacier National Park experience: driving up the long valley of Lake Sherburne on a beautiful, perfectly clear July morning. Pulling over along the way to spot bears in the distance. Driving into a beautiful, craggy mountains with snow shining on their flanks. And then embarking on foot on a journey that takes you …
Continue reading “Glacier National Park: The Grinnell Glacier Trail”
(This is part two of the post series covering our October 14 along the Oregon coast. Previously, I wrote about our drive up the Oregon Coast Highway from Newport to Pacific City). It had already been an incredible day by any measure. Volcanic beaches, seals, lighthouses, whales, arches, rocks, big waves, tiny rivers, and beer: …
Author’s note: Yes, I realize that I have like 5 different blog series going on right now. They’ll get done when they get done. Fortunately, Elizabeth and I have no major travel plans in 2024 so far, so maybe I can get caught up. I’m 26 years old now! Closer to 30 than 20, managing …
When I set out to start writing this close to two weeks ago, I’d planned on a super-post covering everything my parents, Elizabeth, and myself did on October 14, 2023 in Oregon. Over 2,500 words later, I realized that that was a fool’s errand. We just did too much, saw too much, and I have …
Blue Lagoon. It’s the great white (blue?) whale of all aspiring travel influencers who descent on Iceland. Located out on the Reykjanes Peninsula between Reykjavik and Keflavik, the Blue Lagoon is in a favorable position to catch everyone from casuals who are spending a couple of days in Iceland to hardcore travelers who stop there …
