It’s election night as a type, and I’m thinking about anything else, frankly. I just realized, for example, that on Friday, my weekly email goes out, and the only post I have up is that silly one with links to myself in “the news.” I don’t think I’ve ever been at a loss for blog […]
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I Can Breathe in a Small Town
We’re only a few miles from John Mellencamp’s hometown in southern Indiana, and man does this area feel small-townish. This is a view from Skyline Drive through the Jackson-Washington State Forest, into Starve Hollow. Lots of family farms down there. Here in the state forest campground, lots of dudes pulling in to get high over […]
Feeling the Strain of Scheduling in Pisgah
An unusually smart and energetic Weimaraner named Pisgah was my neighbor when I lived in Atlanta. Among many tricks, he would do that one where you make the dog wait with a bone on their nose until you say Go, and then they flip it up and catch it and chow down. Pisgah had much […]
Alaska Trip Retrospective
After our summer-long trip to Alaska, we’re traveling south through British Columbia, Canada, and the climate, sunlight, ecosystems—really everything—is all changing rapidly. No more alpine or subalpine terrain, and it’s kind of shocking. I shouted out to Tracy when I saw a cow. We both said, “Hey, look at this!” when we had to use the flashlight […]
Trail of Blue Ice
We’re camped in Chugach National Forest, the second-largest in the country, I believe. What’s extra cool is that our campground is nestled among amazingly high mountains and glaciers, all around us. Here I am biking back from the iron ranger where we paid for our campsite for a week. That’s a glacier visible from the […]
Long Travel Days to Bois Brule
We have been booking it lately, and, inexplicably, I feel like we’ve finally arrived. Maybe because this campsite feels like a destination we’d choose, a real camping spot, as opposed to somewhere to meet people or have an appointment or get from Point A to Point B. It took a while to get here, though. […]
Photos from Los Padres/Big Sur
Here are the missing photos from my previous post about our week near Big Sur. The land between the highway and the ocean at our Plaskett Creek campground is owned by the National Forest Service, and they lease it to cattle farmers. So it’s divided by barbed-wired fencing for occasional cattle, but when walking paths […]
Los Padres Nat. Forest at Plaskett Creek
Here’s a text-only post because I don’t have enough data to upload photos. Photos coming soon! I’ve also thrown it together from unedited notes, so my apologies there, too. This week we’re in a national forest campground just a tad south of Big Sur. So far as I can tell, this means giant everything: giant […]
Ruby Valley in the High Desert
Tracy knows how much I miss the ocean (heck, if you could be anywhere in the U.S., might you pick the beach?), so he found me a hot spring, which is close enough when you’re out in the desert. We’re parked right outside the Ruby Lake National Wildlife Refuge, which is rare marshland in the […]
Deep Dive into Our Campground
Several friends have asked for more details on where we camp (how we find spots, what they’re like, who are our neighbors, etc.). Right now, we’re at an especially quiet, lovely national forest campground near Yellowstone, so this is a great example. It’s the Gallatin National Forest, which is in the same Forest where we […]
