An hour into our first big day of travels this year—first destination Big Bend National Park, woohoo here we go!—we heard clunking behind us and pulled over casually, just to make sure it was normal clunking. It was not normal clunking. This is what we saw as we stood there on the shoulder with cars […]
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A Friday Night Rodeo, Moving Crystals in My Head, Tricky Houston Plans
I try to keep to one topic per post, but we’ve been crazy busy lately. I even forgot to send out my Friday morning email to readers, for the first time in five years! Okay, it’s automated, which means five years ain’t much to brag about—but also, how could I have not sent it out? […]
The Feel of India in the RGV
On a weekend morning when the wind isn’t up, Tracy hits the local university to bird. No one’s around because there’s no on-student housing, but don’t let that fool you. This Brownsville campus of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley is part of, according to Wikipedia, “the ninth-largest university in the state of Texas […]
How Many Stories Can We Tell?
“Can I tell you about the book I’m reading?” “Did I tell you the funny story about those friends?” “Tell me more about what you want to do.” “Could you tell me how to do that?” The simple story goes: I stayed with Finn for the first half of his vacation on South Padre Island, […]
Big Boy, Pelicans, Airstreamers We Can’t Shake
We designed the week after the big Airstream rally as decompression time by a Corps of Engineers lake in Oklahoma. We’ve gotten some down time in, but it’s been a whopper of a week, overall. On our way, we had a first: we abandoned a Harvest Host reservation after not being satisfied with the sloped […]
City Camping at Little Rock
We are right on the Arkansas River in Little Rock, at a city campground that’s a lot like that one in the French Quarter of New Orleans. It’s basically just an organized parking lot, but it’s within walking and biking distance of most of downtown. What we thought might be a deal-breaker when we pulled […]
Happy Funhouse of Light Thanksgiving
I was about to say that I should post on Thanksgiving if only to commemorate where we are, since I love looking back at anniversaries. There was our first Thanksgiving in the beautiful Everglades, the next one boondocking in windy Joshua Tree, then camping right in New Orleans (which feels like last week, not last […]
Muscle Shoals, Alabama
We’re going to so many places so quickly that feeling like I need to report on those places is a drag right now. I don’t want to skip anything, though! I’ll try to spare myself by being brief and quoting someone else for this one. We’re still traveling south down the Natchez Trace Parkway, and we added […]
Three Surveyors and Another Guy
That’s what surveyors call Mt. Rushmore, since Roosevelt was not a surveyor. Surveyors are extremely proud of the foundational role surveying has played in our country, and rightly so. (Warning for extreme grumpiness and ranting.) I gotta say, though, that I approached Mt Rushmore with a cold shoulder. I mean, nearly everyone in this country […]
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 […]
