Advice for 2026: That crazy quest no one else gets? Just do it!

Me and Lulu sticking out our tongues.

The best thing I did in 2025 was also the craziest: Driving several hours just to see a big wooden troll.

And while I still don’t know exactly why I felt compelled to see Lulu, the first Thomas Dambo troll to be installed indoors at the California Nature Art Museum in Solvang, I do know that meeting her sparked an obsession that soon had me driving across two states to see six more trolls in the Pacific Northwest.

That was cool.

Because after seeing Lulu, I started researching the other Dambo trolls I could drive to, and soon found myself visiting an old friend in Washington State who lived near five of his sculptures.

And though I hadn’t seen Patty in 10 years, she still dropped everything to not only offer me a place to stay, but to spend a full day driving us around (and across!) the Puget Sound so we could fulfill my dream of seeing all five of the Thomas Dambo trolls near Seattle in one day.

“That’s why we’re friends,” Patty said. “We both like doing crazy stuff like this.”

And after eight hours of searching that included two ferry rides, when we reached the fifth troll on Bainbridge Island and completed a mission we were told halfway through was “impossible,” I was high as a kite.

“We saw all five today, this is our last one!” I exclaimed proudly to a woman who just happened to be visiting the same troll with her young daughter.

“Wow,” she said flatly. “That's a lot of driving.”

At first confused by her response, I soon realized that she probably just wanted me to go away because I was not only a stranger, but a super strange stranger who was super excited about some super crazy quest that just sounded like a super big waste of time and gas.

So if you don’t want to find yourself on some super crazy quest like me, whatever you do in 2026, don’t go see Lulu.

Or on second thought, maybe do.

Because if I hadn’t gone down to see Lulu, I wouldn’t have climbed Valencia Peak in Los Osos and met my new favorite picnic table. (More on that here.)

And then I wouldn’t have completed my “impossible" quest with Patty, a great travel companion who I am already planning another grand adventure with for 2026. And though talking to that unimpressed woman at the fifth troll on Bainbridge Island had me briefly second-guessing my life choices, on my drive back to California I became even more grateful for Lulu and the troll fever she gave me.

While staying in Oregon on my drive home, I learned that my mother-in-law had taken a bad fall and would not be able to go home again. Even worse, she very likely would never walk again.

The next morning, I got back on the road as soon as it was light, and around sunrise I stopped at a covered bridge I spotted from I-5 in southern Oregon.

Named “Grave Creek” in honor of a 16-year-old who died while trying to complete a far more important quest than mine, that bridge felt like the perfect place to end my journey: Because while walking over it, all I could think about was how just being able to walk at all would feel like an impossible quest to my mother-in-law, which made me even more grateful that I could still take road trips. And, yes, that I decided to take that silly one to meet Lulu.

So my advice for 2026 is this: That crazy quest you're dreaming about? Just do it. And do it now.