The Times and Travels of Nolan
Documenting trips I've taken and places I've seen.
I groaned when my alarm went off far too early at the Laramie Hampton Inn. Far from a restful night, I had been unable to sleep from pre-proposal nerves for a large chunk of the night. There was a half hour spent in the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub and waiting to …
Continue reading “National Parks Trip: Driving to Grand Teton”
Second season! Mostly a figment of storm chasers’ imaginations, second season consists of the very, very modest uptick in severe weather climatology across the traditional tornado alley in early fall as the jet stream noses southward. Of course, this is balanced against total daylight hours that are essentially equivalent to early March, and often meager …
Continue reading “October 12, 2021 Chase Log: A Spooky Nocturnal Tornado in Clinton, OK”
Two tickets to Laradise. That’s how I’d sold our overnight in Laramie to Elizabeth, anyway. Now I faced the important task of making sure that my overwhelmingly positive experience in town in February 2020 translated for Elizabeth. I put my best Laramie Ambassador face on once we’d checked into our room at the Hampton Inn, …
“We’re 16 minutes late…” Elizabeth led off our trip with this most predictable intonation, well before the sun had thought of rising on August 12. Holding up her phone to document our departure from Norman for our vacation video, she simultaneously managed to generate some #content for me AND let me know that she was …
Let me preface this by saying that I have *never* planned a vacation more than this. It started way back in February, on a bright day in Norman where the low temperature was probably about 4 degrees. Actually, I looked it up and the low that on February 19, 2021 was 2. Scipio did not …
Continue reading “National Parks Trip: Planning and Packing”
In August 2021, Elizabeth and I embarked on the trip of a lifetime. Over the course of a week from August 13 to 20, we explored the iconic national park tandem in northwestern Wyoming – Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Every piece of advice we read said we would need this long to see …
I was blessed in my time at OU to have seen many very fun football games. I was also blessed in my time at OU to have attended many 11:00 kicks in the middle of September with a heat index climbing to near 100 as I had to explain to Elizabeth what a UTEP was. …
Continue reading “Counting down my undergrad OU football games: 39-34 – The Blowout Wins”
In contrast to night one, where I felt like I didn’t sleep at all due to the wind, I slept like a baby on Saturday night along Lake Ouachita. Maybe it was the exhaustion from a pretty long day of hiking. Maybe it was the comfort of a sleeping bag on a chilly night. Maybe …
There are 63 national parks. If you asked any NPS enthusiast who has been to all 63 to rank them, the Gateway Arch would probably rank 63rd on most people’s list. That isn’t necessarily the fault of the Arch, either. It’s a beautiful piece of architecture in downtown St. Louis with historical significance, and a …
Continue reading “St. Louis 2021: Gateway Arch National Park”
Beach week! For some of us (Elizabeth), that means a full week off to eat crepes and lay on the sand. For some of us (me), that means a week of working remotely from a different state. I’m not complaining… too much. It was a busy week, an eventful week, and most of all, a …
