van life ｜ an unexpected (and emotional) ending

I can barely even say that without crying. It's 6 p.m and I just now got to camp. So the plan while I'm here is I want to go check out Arches National Park for sunrise tomorrow um because the park has a reservation system and I don't have one so the only way for me to get in is if I go before 6 a.m or after I think 5 p.m. So I'm aiming for sunrise and then I want to go do Canyonlands for sunset. I'm just super excited to be back here. I love Canyonlands National Park. It was actually the first national park that I ever went to alone. I was living in Denver working at Abercrombie at one of the stores there waiting to get my visa to go over to Italy and I was just so burnt out on being in a shopping mall. It was around Black Friday, Thanksgiving and I was just like over it. So one day after work I got in my rental car and I drove out to the mountains and just kept going. When I arrived it was 11 p.m or something like that. I drove in and just no one was out there because it was so late and I just remember the stars and the Milky Way and just seeing it stretch from one end of the sky to the other and I just I had never seen anything like it in my whole life. I would even say it was probably the beginning of the end once I was exposed to that feeling of being outdoors. I realized that retail was not my jam and being in a shopping mall is it just wasn't what I wanted to do anymore. So it would be a while before I got out but yeah. I'm so excited to be back here and hopefully share these places with you. I'm sure many of you have already been here before and if you have then you know why it's always worth coming back. Just to give you an idea of how many people are out here like this is way down at the end of the road. So busy out here. So no one can actually park around me. There's this tree and a fireplace and then it's like a little plateau um and I do have a neighbor over there and over there and turns out this spot has a bathroom. Also can I just take a moment to talk about how much I really hate hearing generators out in nature. Tell me what's become of us Take me in, free your ghosts No they can't, haunt us all Take me in, don't let go Waking up, call my touch Oh I can't really get down far enough to be in frame. Um so my camera card is completely full uh this is the last little bit I have left here and which is crazy it's like 256 gigs. I don't know how I use all that but anyway I need to import everything and change out my battery because it's almost dead because right now is like the perfect time to be shooting. It's the benefit of having your office with you everywhere you go. I can just import everything and freshen up my battery and keep going. Just got to the Moab mailing center, picked up my package and I asked them when I was in there if I could bring this back in for recycling so pro tip. My last errand of the day hopefully. I just got groceries and gas and now I am at the shower. I don't think you guys can even hear me over this. You know those moments where you know without a doubt that you're exactly where you're supposed to be? This was one of those moments for me. Despite the lightning and thunder and sporadic hail I drove to the Island in the Sky Mesa in Canyonlands National Park. I was the only one there alone on an island in the sky. I didn't really mind. Darkness has its own kind of beauty but then something wild happened. Oh my gosh. Canyonlands is a really special place that I came to after my grandfather died. I can barely even say that without crying but anyway I came here and I thought about him a lot and coming back here and having that experience was like that was definitely my grandpa. Today was a really good day. Okay I guess I gotta go find a place to sleep.