American icon
The bald eagle has been the national symbol of the United States since 1782, and a spiritual symbol of native people for much longer than that.…
Adaptation through natural selection
Studying the history of Earth as we are drawn to engage in our travels, is the ever-evolving adaptation through natural selection, all things interacting, adapting, migrating in their ecosystems.…
Crepuscular light and prospects of wonder
Traveling north, the most noticeable change is the days slowly lengthening, but as often happens, its approach is remarkably fast.…
Fraser River on Highway 97 and points north by northwest
Our first week traveling north in British Columbia has been spent along the Fraser River, the longest river in the province. Driving north, we found ourselves in deep gorges created by the mighty flow of this river, a sinuous serpentine snake, narrowing and opening as geography permits.…
Canada Ho!
The farther away you travel from the gravity of the mass mind of the United States, the more you discover that as a whole, Canadians are a pretty personable lot.…
North with the spring
For those of you not familiar with Edwin Way Teale, he was a peripatetic naturalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who lived in the first half of the twentieth century, primarily known for his book series,…
Our new ebook is available!
Announcing our compilation of full time travel writing filled with adventure, history, and unique characters and destinations. Herein are captivating tales before, beside, and behind each bend in the road. Wanderlust is an emotion free…
Auto mottoes: America’s license plates
One of the ways we kill time on the road is to read (and ponder) the various license plates we see, and the state mottoes that they display. As it turns out, state license plates…
Muskeg, Moose, Muskrats—and Mosquitoes
What lies beneath? Muskeg, moose, muskrats & mosquitoes: as we journey north, the earth takes on a rich mufti of red, green & brown.…
North with the spring
Late April finds us at the foot of the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia. Our drive shuttles us along exquisite explosive verdant green parkways representative of the East Coast region, over and around rolling hills on a ribbon of road that rocks and lulls us into tranquil contentment.…
Scene along the road 9
A compilation of writing based on texts to Ruth, while awaiting truck service in New Orleans I’m figuring this vehicle fluid service might take an hour with the “extree” (Southern pronunciation) service work I requested:…
Pumpin’ the Permian, Frackin’ the Forgotten
Time travel Hold on! We’re going on a ride powered by petroleum, through a time portal, on the surface of the earth that’s viewed over millions and billions of years and moves like a lava…
White Sands Missile Range
Twenty-four years ago, we crossed over the mountains from Las Cruces into the White Sands Range, noted the existence of the Missile Range Museum on the south end of the vast off-limits government testing facility,…
Birds of a feather
A fine mid-January day in southern Arizona, Painted Rock Petroglyphs, inside the Bureau of Land Management, finds me in conversation with our recently arrived friend Circ, who with his wife Cindy have parked next to…
Chaco
Hearing the echoes of tens of thousands of ancient trail trekkers and home seekers, we returned, after 20 years, to a point of light that became a supernova in the culture of the Southwest. The…
Portland Spring: Consciousness Stream
Water-rich verdant loam, thick moss enveloping vertical and horizontal facades in spongy viridescense; rivers, streams, creeks, rivulets riffle through and around; sentinel snow-peaked mountains chaperone the horizons; roadways imitate the land’s regional cardinal directions yet…
Arizona Cataclysm!
You and fellow members of your tribe are foraging and hunting across cool, moist, partly-grass, partly-forested terrain. Your clan has successfully completed that rarest-of-rare hunts: a 12-foot tall, hairy, curved-tusked creature that will provide food…
Scary Roads We Love to Hate
Have I already mentioned to you that we don’t like to travel on interstates? Oh yes, when necessity dictates, a timely run, or the interstate is the only road option—but the interstate is to the…
Artifacts, Hulks, Ruins, Relics, Rubble, Remains, Remnants….
When we cross fenced barriers, open broken doors, and step across rubble-strewn entranceways, we hear voices echoing in time. Around us are the artifacts of a not-too-distant past, once discarded in the American dream of…
How to Design a Campground Bathroom
by Ruth Welcome, campground designers! Whether you own an RV park or administer a state- or county-owned campground, this course is for you. Our curriculum includes all you need to know to design a bathroom…
Campground Characters
When you nose into any campground you pass through a veil of probability. There are multiple layers of consideration: location; privacy; facilities; feng shui of view; positioning of solar if necessary; proximity to hiking, biking,…
Scene Along the Road 4: Winds and Tracks of Time
Zephyros Ah, Joshua Tree! We find ourselves again at a favorite boondocking site, just adjacent to the National Park border, with the I-10 corridor’s blistering fast cell and data connection. Every iteration is a learning…
“Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, What’s the Supremest Species of Them All…?”
Mirror: “Humanity’s ego reigns extreme, but beneath your feet lives some supreme.” “Say what?!” A short stroll here, in the Anza Borrego Desert, remnant dried sea from a distant past, reveals a landscape pockmarked with…
Two for 2; and Exploring 1.61803
Two months have now passed since the passing of Gyp, and we are crossing into the outfield of two years’ exploring a life of enchantment on the roads less traveled, hence the blog post title.…
Meeting with some of the oldest living things on earth
August 10, 1952: Patricia Huber was feeling very uncomfortable. She was a few days, or perhaps hours, from giving birth, and her baby’s kicking and rolling about was tempering her tolerance for the event soon…
The Ancient Ones: Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, Slick Rock Country, and Living on the Edge
Many of us have what we call our “home base,” and for us it is the Southwest. Moving west through Colorado, we watched the terrain shape shift from peaks and rolling plains to rocky red…
Traveling through bendable time on steel rails
As one who has always encouraged his students to build upon the knowledge previously imparted, these numbers should look familiar―37.2691273,-107.8825162―but if clarification is necessary, refer to our last post, Boondockin’ the Old Spanish Trail. (Authors…
Boxes
by Ruth I hate boxes. No, not the cardboard kind that Kitty plays in. I mean those boxes people put you in (and you put them in) the minute you put a label on something.…
Boondockin’ the Old Spanish Trail
What better opportunity to free ourselves from the unrelenting crush of summer excursionists flowing in and around us, like red corpuscles along arterial trackways, than to disengage into a ten-foot-wide opening in the highway fence.…
“Where ya from?…” Redux
We posted this short video clip a number of months ago—how time does slip by—but it seems appropriate to once again revisit it as an icon to our response that seems to pop up inevitably…
Real Time Savannah Adventures: Part 2
“When you enter through the portal, you may never return the same.” Savannah’s siren call echoes in your mind and body, a sinister syncopation matching the growing intensity of our truck’s windshield wipers. A veil…
Scene Along the Road 2: Rules of the Road, Writ in Sand
I glance into the driver’s rear side view mirrors…spot check the rear trailer video camera…all clear. One second later a vehicle passes on the left as fast as a blink of the eye, and gone.…
Disney World: not for the weak-hearted
We hadn’t done it in over 30 years, neither of us, so we rolled into Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground for a week’s adventure…now, “rolling in” is an understatement as the Disney Dream Machine…
Scene Along the Road: 1
“One call ya’ll!” “Truck injury? Call: 800-Lawyer-Up!” How about this one: an image of a Mohawk-haired professional wrestler and the caption, “Are you asking for it? 800-ASKGARY.” Or the voracious and dangerous female sharks: “Ever…
Caliginous Cacophony
Spoiler Alert! If you’re reading this on a cellphone, and consequently not seeing the photos, you’re missing out—find a bigger screen! We open the silver door and step out into the warm moist night, Gyp…
No Truck: No Texas, and Going Postal in America
No truck, no Texas: If you aren’t driving a truck in Texas you are less than human, or at least not a true blood, and I’m not talking your run-of-the-mill, half-ton, maybe-weekend hauler. You’ve gotta…
Galveston Island and the Bryan Museum
We slowly meandered east and up along the south Texas coast line hugging the Gulf of Mexico’s warm waters, and serendipitously chose Galveston Island as our place of refuge and discovery for a time. We…
NOLA: It’s about the food
by Ruth The trouble with writing an ongoing blog is, well, you can easily get sidetracked. We got sidetracked by New Orleans. Those of you who know us well will not be surprised. Between some…
Nothin’ says Amurica like the rodeo!
Seeing a rodeo was big on our bucket list, and Rodeo Austin—our San Francisco-away-from-home in the middle of the conservative melting pot of the Lone Star State—would be the host. We’ve been talkin’ ’bout goin’…