Category Archives: Spirituality

Two more days and I’ll be on an airplane to begin my summer roadtrip/spiritual journey, which my friend and I have dubbed Epiphany Quest 2010. We started out calling it our “Thelma and Louise trip,” because we’re just a couple of middle aged women in a car, traveling freely from town to town, but it didn’t turn out so well for them. So we then tried to make a Romy and Michelle connection, but we couldn‘t agree on who was the Mary and who was the Rhoda. So, Epiphany Quest 2010 it is.

I wish I could talk more about the purpose for the trip that I mentioned in previous posts—that my oldest friend is going through a painful divorce and just needs to get away far away—because it would make this story more complete. However, out of respect for her privacy, I’ll mostly be talking about my own side of the journey.

Not that my side of the journey will be dull! Far from it, because this is going to be an amazing trip, if it would ever begin! I have been getting ready for so long, it seems, that I feel like I’m chasing my tail.

I’ve been working with AAA (if you don’t have a AAA membership, you have no idea how helpful they are when planning something like this) and have all the hotels reserved with some pretty good deals. I also got a GREAT price on a rental car, because my friend didn’t want to take her own car on the road for such a very long drive, through desert and mountains.

I’m flying to Texas, from Florida, on Wednesday, and we’ll pick up the rental car once I land. Then we’ll go to the store to get lots of bottled water (we’ll be driving across the desert until we hit the Los Angeles area) and the car munchies we’ll need to get us as far as Scottsdale, where we’ll stay the night with family and also be hitting our very first TRADER JOE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Those of you who know Trader Joe know why I’m so jubilant. Those of you who don’t would never understand. Trader Joe is the most amazing grocery store on the planet, and we don’t have them in Florida, so I’m going to stock up. We’ll most likely pick up a bottle or twelve of Two Buck Chuck.* 😀

Meantime, I found a great link today to an article about The Best Healthy Foods in America, which will make it much easier for us to make food choices while traveling.

I’m getting ahead of myself. On Wednesday evening, my friend and I will have the first of the many psychic readings we’ve planned on the trip. We’ll be seeing an extremely gifted psychic/healer that I know (I don’t know if she has privacy preferences about being named in these blogs, so I’ll have to check with her first before I mention her name). This is the first, bookend reading that I mentioned in a previous blog—we’ll both receive a body scan from her, to see what condition our condition is in. We’ll have another in three weeks, when we return, to see what has changed.

But for today, Monday, I’m concentrating on packing light, yet thoroughly. We’ll be in three different climates, having lots of different kinds of adventures—from seeing the dinosaurs from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, to deeply spiritual journeys at Mt. Shasta, to the casinos of Lake Tahoe and then some—but I want to keep it down to one suitcase. We’ll have to do laundry several times this way, but we are going to have to lug this shit around with us from hotel to hotel, so I don’t want to be weighted down.

But I’m babbling now. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. So much to think about, so much to get ready, and so much anxiety about whether we have all of our ducks in a row, that it’s hard to concentrate on writing a coherent sentence. So forgive me if this has all been a mishmash of thoughts. Get used to it, because it’s going to be an incredible ride!

*Two Buck Chuck is now called Three Buck Chuck, due to inflation, but it’s still a smokin’ deal. I called it Two Buck Chuck here because the link I attached above still calls it by the old name.

It’s official. The trip begins on June 9, one week from today. I finally got the go-ahead to buy my airline ticket to Texas, where I’m meeting up with my friend. The plan is to drive through Texas across Hwy 10, all the way to Santa Monica, making a few stops along the way. Then we’re going up Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco, followed by a few days in Mount Shasta, then Lake Tahoe, Salt Lake City, Denver, Albuquerque, Roswell, and then Texas again.

The trip will take about three weeks, during which time we’re going to hit all the “New Age” stuff we can find on the way. I wish I knew of a better phrase than New Age, because I always get reactions from people for using an old phrase for a new way of thinking. But I honestly don’t know of another phrase to use that is globally understood as a shorthand description of my spiritual beliefs. If you have one, please share it because I’d be grateful for the verbal assist. I don’t have the time to explain in depth, in every post, what my beliefs are (because it’s going to be a focal point of this trip), so a shorthand phrase is pretty important.

Anyway, starting in San Francisco, which is the first city we’re going to stop in for more than a quick night’s sleep, we’ll be seeking all of the psychically oriented sites we can find.

When we first stated this intention to each other, we didn’t really have a firm idea of what we were talking about because neither of us has been to most of these places. Once we get north of Santa Barbara, I’m in new territory until we get to Denver. The itinerary was initially a nebulous idea, like “What if we took a trip to see some beautiful places in America, and as much woo-woo shit as we can find on the way?” As you can see, we’re not taking this so seriously that we can’t have fun with it, but now that it’s sinking in what we’re doing, I can see that we will definitely come back changed people. See, part of the “new age” beliefs that I’m talking about is the idea that whatever you intend and put your focus on becomes your future. The fact that we intend a meaningful, spiritual, FUN journey means we’re gonna have a meaningful, spiritual, FUN journey.

We’re starting the trip with a psychic reading from a very gifted young woman who will do a body scan and reading for both of us. We’ll take notes about what she says, and upon our return, repeat the procedure, just to see what changes she sees.

We don’t know yet what we’ll be doing in San Francisco. I’m going to spend the next few days researching that topic.

In Mount Shasta, we’ll be taking the vortex tour. Panther Meadow, which has been recommended by several people, was under 11 feet of snow a few days ago, so I don’t know if it’s going to be on the itinerary. (Can you imagine 11 feet of friggin’ snow in JUNE???) It looks like this will be the primary focal point of the trip because, as I mentioned in the previous post, Shasta is apparently sort of the “holy city” of New Agers (there’s that damned phrase again). We’ll also be getting some psychic readings done here.

After that, a few days in the “healing waters” of Lake Tahoe (and maybe pulling a few slot handles) will be fun.

Then we’ll be driving through Salt Lake City, where I want to stop and check out the Mormon Temple, and get some pictures. Why not, eh? We’ll be there, and it would be a shame to not vibe into it and see how it feels. Non-Mormon’s aren’t allowed inside, but that’s okay. I just want to see what it feels like to be there, and to drive through the Salt Flats on the west side of the city. This will be a very cool visual day, with lots o’ pictures.

Oh yeah, I’ll be posting pictures of the trip here and on Facebook. Get ready. 😀

Next, we’ll be driving through the Rockies to Denver, where we’ll be attending a channeling and psychic reading session at the Inner Connections Institute, where someone dear to me is studying and is deeply impressed with the work they do there.

Then, we’ll end up in Roswell where we’ll visit the UFO museum, and spend the evening with my friend, psychic Curtis Folts. We’ll probably ask him to put on his psychic hat and do some readings while we’re there, as well.

Finally, we’ll end up back in Texas, where we’ll repeat the initial body scans and see where we are.

Meantime, during this tour, I’ll be promoting my book, Shape Shifting—the body/mind/spirit weight solution in the Next Top Spiritual Author competition, and doing various radio shows. In fact, I just booked a show for June 22, at 9PM EST, on CBS Radio! I’ll be calling in from my hotel in Lake Tahoe, after the Shasta trip, so I’ll be in fine form, I’m sure!

So where does the headline about “Divine Timing rearing its head” come in? Well, we’ve been delayed for weeks now with regard to finalizing the exact dates of my flight. We’ve been able to plan a lot of this trip, like hotels and car rental, etc., because they aren’t written in stone. But it’s next to impossible to make changes in airline tickets, and my friend has been waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for her final divorce hearing date. Until that was set in stone, we couldn’t buy the ticket.

This has been driving us both pretty antsy, because we were stalled in our ability to move forward. This event has built up such a head of steam that it feels like it has a life of its own. The continual delays on an exact date were excruciating. Neither of us could figure out why we couldn’t just BUY THE DAMNED TICKETS ALREADY, but now I know.

Up until yesterday, my plan was to fly home on July 1. But now I know that we’re picking up an unexpected passenger (extra driver!) at the tail end of the trip, and I will, therefore, be staying an extra couple of days. If we had bought that ticket last week, that would have been impossible.

Don’t you love synchronicity?