Don’t worry, no animals were harmed in the writing of this blog post! My wife and I joined a few other couples in Colorado to hike the Rocky Mountain National Park last week and have just returned to the flatlands. We enjoyed the relatively cool summer weather in Colorado which was a welcome break from the oppressive heat and humidity of the Deep South in July.
As usual we squeezed in a lot of hiking and as usual we did not take even one day to acclimate to the altitude. We hiked 50 miles of trails over a five day period with most of the trails running from 300 to 500 feet of elevation gain per mile. If you are used to mountain hiking you’ll know that is STEEP stuff. We also generally were in the 10,000 to 13,000 feet of elevation range for most of the treks. Considering our home in Arkansas sits at about 200 feet of elevation it is a pretty good struggle to catch your breath in such thin air, in fact the available oxygen is reduced by over a third at the heights we were hiking, so while it was awesome to see the views, we paid for it with a lot of panting and heavy breathing.
My wife and I are both boomers, but we are runners and competitive tennis players so we are in somewhat better than average shape for our age. Still it was all I could do to keep up with the others in our group. We saw some wildlife, mostly deer and moose with an elk or two included but not as many as we expected. I think the rainy spring and summer has made so much food available that the animals do not have to range very far to find plenty of forage.
As is often the case I thought about how difficult taking a hiking trip would have been four years ago when I was working my old 9 to 5. First I would have had to plan the dates of the trip far in advance. And generally about half of the time something would happen in the chemical complex I ran that would cause me to have to cancel the trip. In fact, a standing family joke for us was that a family vacation was a trip for Mom and the kids, because Dad always ended up missing the trip! That’s not a thing anymore because I do not have a job to go to and I am never on call since I retired.
Also we would have flown because of the time factor of being away from the job, but now we could spend a few days driving and not miss all the interesting things we pass on the way there. I’m not opposed to flying but for my wife and me the drive is half the fun. We’ve seen dozens of unique sights traveling at ground level that you miss at 40,000 feet. The Painted Mines, the Bidi Badlands, Canon City Skyline Drive and the world’s largest ball of twine. Well, actually, we skipped the ball of twine in Kansas and went to the Painted Mines instead.
I’d have also been concerned about the lack of cell coverage on the drive and in remote Colorado. Most likely I’d have received dozens of email and several work calls every day of my vacation and some of those would require a quick response that would be difficult from the top of Mt. Ida or Lulu City. But now, who cares if the phone works? Not a problem!
And try as I might I’m sure my mind would have kept grinding away on whatever big problems were my biggest concerns at work. Being over budget by a few million dollars on the latest project or having capacity problems with some of the equipment or perhaps safety concerns for my people. On this trip I did not worry about anything. The consulting work I do on a very part time basis doesn’t cause me enough stress to mention and it can almost always wait a week without any input from me at all. Best of all there is zero work that piles up when I’m away. Most of the time I could be gone a month and my clients would not be impacted.
At the end of the planned week of hiking we decided to drive about 500 miles out of our way to do some off roading at Lake City Colorado. There is a very cool trail system running from Lake City to Silverton, Colorado that is perfect for Jeeps and side by side ATV’s so we rented a Polaris RZR, just like the one we own, and spent all day riding rough trails through amazing mountain passes. It was a wonderful break for our legs from the extreme hiking and had equally gorgeous scenery. We just came up with that idea at the last minute and extended our road trip for two days. In my old life that would not have been possible, my CEO would have been breathing down my neck about my absence and stretching it longer just to have some more fun? Not likely. But now, we take as many trips as we want. There are no financial or time constraints any more. It is a nice way to live.
Sometimes I take my new life for granted, sleeping in until 8:30 AM this morning for instance, and not having an alarm clock set. That’s an amazing thing, if you are still working I know you probably hate the alarm going off. In my case the only time it alarms is when I’m getting up early to do something fun that I want to do. But the thing about human adaptation is that I have stopped realizing what a huge gift it is to not have to get up and go to work. Same thing about being able to sit here and type this post in the early afternoon while my wife is out playing tennis, that seems normal now and I guess it is my new normal. Since it is now my everyday life I don’t even notice. But before I retired early, there is no way I could be doing this on a week day, I’d be busy in endless meetings at the plant.
Vacation trips are much different in another way as well. In my old work days they were an attempt to squeeze in some time to unwind and find peace of mind. But work always intruded and constrained the joy to less than it should have been. Now fun trips are not so different from staying at home. The scenery changes but the feeling of doing whatever I choose is pretty much the same. Basically every day feels like vacation, in fact better than vacations used to feel, because there is little threat of work interrupting my plans.
Oh yeah, there was the moose wreck, almost forgot about that. One thing hiking allows is the ability to observe wild animals up close. Sometimes a little too close. Our third day out we were hiking a ten mile loop to Little Yellowstone and Lake Verna in the Park. Suddenly a mama moose appeared on the trail right in front of us, and a very large calf followed her out onto the trail. They seemed unconcerned about a few hikers and one went left and the other went to the right side of the trail to munch on tasty vegetation. The calf, which was the size of a horse, not a new born by any stretch, decided he did not like the looks of our crew and bolted back toward mama moose. The only problem was he decided to make a very sharp turn just as he crossed the trail, which was muddy and slick at that spot. He took a major pratfall just like he had stepped on a banana peel and slammed down on his side in the mud. He was uninjured, but I’m sure, very embarrassed. Mama, walked up to him as he regained his feet and looked at the little guy reproachfully. I don’t speak moose, but I’m fairly confident that what she was telling him was that moose have a responsibility to the dignity of the species. In other words “Never fall on your face in front of humans, son!”
These thoughts about “vacationing” as a slightly early retired couple versus what used to pass as vacations are evolving with each year that passes since I pulled the plug on my job. We take the same kinds of trips to the same kinds of places but we do them much more often. The biggest change though, is we are never in a hurry now. We have time to extend our stay, time to add on destinations and time to recover from trips after we get back home without having to rush back to a pile of backed up work. It may not sound that different to you, but to me the difference is in the way it feels. It feels like I always thought vacations should feel, but that they never quite did.
As usual if you’d like to make a comment please do! If you don’t see a comment box then just click on the title at the top of the post and that should get you there.
What about you, if you have retired do vacation trips feel different now?
If you are still working full time do work worries ever interfere with your enjoyment of your vacation trips?
I am still grinding away at my corporate job. I went on a family vacation not too long ago. I didn’t quite enjoy it as much as I could have because I spent a portion of the trip thinking and worrying about an upcoming big meeting the week after I get back from vacation.
I remember asking myself on that vacation “wouldn’t it be so great if I didn’t have to worry about work”.
Sounds like you know exactly what I was talking about. But at least time off is still good, even if it isn’t perfect. I don’t regret my work years, I enjoyed them for the most part. But I do enjoy life more now.
when i was still working long hard hours a few years ago i felt i owed it to myself to get away and have vacations, although i never worried about work while i was away. now that i’ve found this cushy landing spot at work i feel less need to get away and am very selective on what i say “yes” to. sometimes it’s good to be a lower level employee. contentment is a good thing.
that’s pretty cool you saw a moose wipe out.
I think that’s a great point. In fact I had some extremely talented people at work who refused to accept management jobs because they could make almost the same money as hourly operators without the hassles I had to go through. They got overtime if they worked extra and at the end of the shift they could totally forget about work and hand the job over to the next guy. I was jealous of that sometimes.
“Unhurried” describes my early semi-retirement. I don’t fight rush hour, I rarely go shopping on weekends and the only time I hurry is when I try to cram in too many activities. The freedom of not being on the clock is the best.
Amen to that Steve, well stated.
You really nailed all the points on the mark. I’m still slaving away in my job, having to plan my 3 day Labor Day weekend trip 2 months in advance and even then still getting an email from my boss to see if I can cover a shift during that time.
I used to road trip much more in college and I’m glad I got to enjoy it then since flying is now my only option with my limited vacation time. Oh, and staying an extra day or two for an impromptu vacation extension? Hah!
I am happy for you and your wife though. You’ve worked hard for it and truly deserve what you have now 🙂
I don’t regret working as long as I did because that was important to me at the time, but when it stopped being important it was time to get out and I was very fortunate to have accumulated enough so that when the job stopped being fun I was confident I did not need a paycheck anymore. I think it is important to have as much joy in your life now as you can while still looking forward to an even better future. Thanks for commenting!