I was set on writing this entry at the end of today’s day of errands in Duluth, Minnesota (it’s Thursday); I like having an entry to end the ”blog week,” with my email going out on Fridays. But damn did we have a busy day out. We left the campsite before 9 am, and now […]
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A Different “Premium” at Lake Superior
Man, it’s been almost a week since I posted last, which has to be a record for me. Since then, we: stayed overnight in a rest area near the Canadian border, which had its pros (a pond we sat by for happy hour) and cons (trucks moving in and out all night); crossed the border […]
Buzz the Elk, Land Your Plane, Pitch Your Tent
Most of the campgrounds we’ve stayed in across the country are designed with the usual drive-around loops, with sites along each side for RVs or tents. Sometimes the sites are in a grid, sometimes set around a reservoir or lake. But they’re all about driving in and where you park your vehicle. Hike in & […]
“She Gets Excited Easily”
That’s how Tracy excused me when I suddenly jumped up and left our weekly Zoom trivia game. Go Team Donner Party! Just without me for a bit. There was a whale within sight, and I had to grab the binoculars to watch it surface. This was the third majorly wonderful wild animal spotting in a […]
Am I on Vacation?
If you’re lucky enough to have been able to take a vacation, you know that the whole point is to be away from regular life. You want to be physically away, in a new place, where you can forget about your usual worries, where you get out of your routine, where normal life is suspended. If you’re lucky […]
Peering at the Ocean, Peering under Rocks
Damn this cold and wind. I feel like I haven’t been truly warm since this past fall in Death Valley, and even then the temps dropped as soon as the sun lowered. I know we’ve had warm—even hot—days intermittently, but we seem to carry the cold with us, and the ever-present wind. Here at Sonoma […]
Goodbye San Simeon, Bring on the Music Game
Today is our final day at San Simeon State Park; tomorrow we take a short but dramatic drive up Highway 1 to a new (to us) state park in the Big Sur area. We’ll have no cell signal at all there, so I thought I’d post while I can. For the last of our week here […]
Beauty and the Stress
My friend Whit shared a NYT article with me yesterday about the contrast between the shiny social media portrayal of #VanLife and the sometimes-miserable day-to-day reality of constant life and travel in such a small space. You guys know this is a multi-layered theme for me here. It’s easy to make fun of the trendy […]
“Where the Kelp Meets the Sycamore Tree”
This exactly describes where we’re camped at our first California State Park campground by the ocean: Leo Carrillo State Park, directly west of LA at the foot of the Santa Monica Mountains. We walk under the bridge with this mural (imagine dolphins jumping up to meet bald eagles, all painted by children) to get to […]
Anza-Borrego
The small tourist town of Borrego Springs is right in the middle of Anza-Borrego State Park, about 40 miles north of the Mexican border (in California). We came here because we’re basically dilly dallying around the southwest for the winter, trying not to get to our “destination,” Yuma, so early that we’ll be bored there […]