As usual, Tracy picked out this stop on his own during his many quiet planning afternoons, and when I looked it up on the map, basically as we pulled in, I thought for sure it would suck. It’s on Lake Michigan, yeah, but at the southern tip, close to Chicago and surrounded by cities. […]
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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 […]
Rocket Barges and Giant Cypress at a River Confluence
I meant this to be a short photo essay from our one-night stay at Fort Defiance State Park in Cairo (pronounced like Kayro Syrup), Illinois. I got carried away. Such an impressive place. This river confluence is one of the largest in North America. The Ohio River is actually wider than the Mississippi where it becomes […]
A Proper Update
I feel guilty that so many friends opened that last post looking for an update on my medical questions, only for me to say, “I don’t want to talk about it.” I really was overwhelmed with, shall we say, unproductive feelings. Even now as I try to draft a better response, I find myself rambling […]
Bluegrass, Blue Ridge, Orange Sky, Fireflies
Perfect moment report! Tracy and I were standing on the mountain ridge at this Airstream campground in southwest Virginia, watching the sun set. Just the right amount of distant clouds were over the Blue Ridge so that soft stretches of orange and pink were occasionally punctuated with striations of neon. Half the sky shifted in […]
Dipping into a Different RV Lifestyle
We’re at a gorgeous Airstream-only campground (not the one we usually go to, although that’s up soon). This one’s near Roanoke, Virginia, up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so the elevation has cured our heat-dome woes for a bit. What an abrupt change in lifestyle for us! It’s not like we’ve come here from months […]
Small Precious Things
We’re such the assholes when we pull into a campground. We leave the diesel truck running in the road while we scope out our site. Once in, we crank down jacks with a drill, set up the starlink antenna, put up the tent, add lights. It’s a lot of stuff we disgorge onto our campsite […]
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: […]
Two Bands, Four Styles, Several Surprises, One Happy Me
“Is this the The Other One?” I can’t believe I’m about to ask this of a guy who looks to be the dad of the band we’re watching at a park in Upstate New York. The kids in the band are blaring distorted guitar and screaming vocals; they’re metal in every way. There is no […]
Good News on Schodack Island (& More Glen Shots)
I’ll get the good news out of the way and then talk about where we are. The good news is that I do not have a brain tumor. I’m serious, I’ve been wracked with justifiable worry about this, ever since a month ago when my former endocrinologist told me she thought I had one. Since […]
