There’s a beautifully written book entitled, Housekeeping, in which author Marilynne Robinson’s radical hero, a vagrant, estranged aunt, moves into a rural house to be the guardian of two teen girls. What could be seen as her neglect of housekeeping allows nature to slowly take over the old house. What’s really happening is a breakdown of the […]
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Western New Mexico via BLM Land
We’re in the El Malpais National Conservation Area, a little north of the National Monument. Tracy’s walked on some of the lava flows that made people long ago name this the bad land, but I haven’t yet, so I’ll save those photos for another post. I can catch up to this point, though. We had […]
Camping and Hiking along the Gila River
We’ve spent a week boondocking in a horse corral between the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument visitor’s center and the trailhead to the cliff dwellings hike; in short, along the Gila River in western New Mexico. The Gila is one of the longest rivers in the West, with a gigantic watershed. People have lived along […]
Encounters with Neighbors
Eons ago, Blogging Mentor Mark asked if I’d write a post about the odd people I’ve met on the road. Good idea, right? I started in on it all excited, thinking, this will be the best retrospective post ever! I called it, “Strangers Stranger Than than Usual Strangers.” That post has been sitting in my […]
Dreaming of My Kind of Boondocking
I’ve been thinking more wistfully than ever about a certain kind of boondocking. First, let me parse out the different uses of that word. (Fun, stuff, yes?) Most people use the word when they’re parked without hookups, simple as that. I’ve even seen people call it boondocking when they spend the night in the parking […]
Our Impossible 11-hour Travel Day
After I wrote that Alice’s Restaurant post, a lot happened. We didn’t get fined for staying on the beach an extra day, but the opposite happened: we kinda wished the cops had stopped by our trailer, and we wished that twice. Thanksgiving Night 7 pm: Tracy was watching football and I happened to look out […]
Wherein We Act Out Alice’s Restaurant Massacree
You know the story: Arlo and friends clean up after a Thanksgiving feast at Alice’s church-turned-house and end up getting arrested for throwing their trash off a cliff, which plays a role years later in a pretty ironic situation when Arlo’s being drafted for the Vietnam War. He says to the draft sargeant, “You mean […]
On the Beach, the Crowded, Chilly, Still-It’s-a-Beach Beach
We finally made it to camp right on the beach! Man, have we spoiled ourselves with previous years doing this, though, because this beach location kinda sucks. Okay, it doesn’t truly suck. No beach does, right? And here all the elements are in place: the trailer is parked on the sand with not a thing […]
Navigating a Hipcamp in the Heat
This week we’re parked at one of those brewery/winery/event spaces that are so popular with young, Eastcoast families with disposable income, this one near Fredericksburg, Virginia, and we chose it only because we were pretty desperate. It was a last-ditch plan because it’s part of the Harvest Hosts and Hipcamp listings that drive us bonkers: […]
An Odd Bliss
There are a few moments in my travel life that really feel right, whatever that means, despite all kinds of weirdness that goes along with them. A moment like this happened a few days ago, when we were driving down a one-lane dirt road in the middle of nowhere, with no cell signal and no […]
