About field notes
Enjoying a cocktail with a stuffed mountain lion at the Last Tuesday Society bar in Hackney, London in 2017
“TJ, you go to the weirdest places man” someone told me recently. The only compliment I can receive higher than that is when someone compliments my cut off short collection. Now that I live in Seattle, the latter compliment happens less than the former which leaves me a little sad. Anyways, travel!
I like to go to places. But here’s the sitch. Anyone can go to Big Ben or Westminster Abbey in London. Well not anyone. My ass certainly couldn’t when I was a kid. But as an adult, I’ve had the good fortune to travel for work and for pleasure more than I could have ever imagined as a kid. And the last time I was in London for a work gig a few years ago, I had a day to myself to explore. And rather than see the logical places I mention above (which, by the way, are great! go see em!) I decided to go see the Viktor Wynd Museum, a “house of curiosities” located in the basement of a bar called “The Last Tuesday Society”. Sounds weird? That’s because it is.
I’ve now been to a few places that you probably won’t find on Tripadvisor, Yelp, or that fancy travel influencer’s IG account. But these are the kinds of places I love to see b/c it often helps you really dig into what makes a city, town, or village tick. And it’s the kinds of places I’ve started to take my kids to visit. For the past few years, I’ve started to catalog the places I would go to and the unusual things I would see. I became a somewhat regular contributor to Atlas Obscura. But up until now, my thoughts, stories, and suggestions have lived on the notes section of my phone or in emails to friends. Now I’m starting to write them down here on this website for all to see.
Most of the notes are related to roadtrip my family and I finished up in July 2021. The trip took us across 10 states, 8 national parks, over 9,000 driving miles, and 112 days and we did it with a freshly potty trained 2 year old and a motor mouth 4 year old. The notes are designed to weave in stories from those trips (or stories that reminded us of those trips), places we enjoyed, food we hated, and hikes that nearly killed us.
One last point before I let you loose here: I tend to write in public and very very quickly. I don’t have an editor (b/c I’m just some schlep writin’ shit down outside Seattle) so excuse the typos, the logical flaws, the incomplete sentences, and the occasional picture of me roaming around my house in cut off shorts.