All In A Day

I will never forget the first time when I woke up to sunrise colors next to the Pacific Ocean and seeing sunset colors in the Eastern Sierra all in the same day.

Doing it again this year, my plan was to make it up to the Locked Gate trailhead on White Mountain from San Francisco before sundown. I left home at 6:30am and was over Sonora pass by mid-morning. Trying to avoid the afternoon heat in the Owens Valley, I managed to squeeze in two hour detour to Lundy Lake for lunch. By 5:30pm, I was climbing the dirt road up past the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest and got to my destination before the sun set behind the Sierra Nevada mountain range. When I finally parked my truck for the night at the trailhead and ate a late dinner, it took a moment to comprehend and process the entire days’ events: approximately 9 hours of driving 400 miles. I said to myself: that’s crazy. Wow. I did that all in a day. And I still had energy to stay up into the night to shoot the Milky Way.

We are all given 24 hours in a day. That’s a lot of time if you ask me.

The best days start off early and end super late. The most productive days are schedule packed, down to the minute. You squeeze every ounce you have during the day. You can get so much done and accomplished if you just commit and dedicate all your time. Comparing these days to the average days spent not traveling while the same amount of hours have passed, it feels as if I’m just wasting life.  

People say to live every day as if it’s your last. When heard, the phrase is often acknowledged and then quickly disregarded, because we are afraid to push past our comfort zones or believe it will take too much time and energy. The more I travel, the more I find myself striving to fulfill this desire.

To me, making the most out of each day translates to making the most out of life. That’s how to live life to the fullest, every day. 

July 23, 2022 | Travel Stories