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.…
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,…
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.…
**IT Happens…
Yep, freewheeling on the road is an antidote to constipation of the spirit. What strange synchronicity of events conjures a “good” or “bad” day? Do events in time create attractiveness like magnetic black holes? We…
Arizona Cataclysm Reprised: In the Matrix
One of our readers, Michael Luxem, wrote a fact-check comment in response to the blog post, Arizona Cataclysm, that stated, “It is difficult to imagine something only 160 feet in diameter—about the length of three semi-tractor…
Oatman Massacre: The Bones Still Speak
A cool wind blows from east to west across our lonely mesa, impeded only by scattered low-lying creosote bushes and straggling steadfast saguaro, and a volcanic rock field spread helter-skelter to the horizon sustains a…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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’…
Arizona Reprised: Ajo (Part 2)
The town of Ajo, as mentioned in an earlier blog post, sits close to the border of Mexico, and takes its name, it is said, either from the Spanish word for garlic, or perhaps from…
Arizona Reprised: The Desert Museum (Part 1)
In recent past blog posts I mentioned that a few places would be revisited for special mention. One of these is the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which I had briefly described as one of my “favorites.”…
“Where Ya From?”
Perhaps nothing epitomizes the theme of our travels better than this clip from the original Magnificent Seven, staring Yul Brynner.
Dog noses make “scents,” and you make the road by walking it
Part 1: Our Border Collie, Gyp, takes out her herding frustration with us by bringing us sticks to throw, and her impulsiveness led me to look up the definition and explanation of OCD in the…
Washing the traces of the world away…and away
I’m sitting 20 feet off the beach on the coast, just north of Ventura, California, listening to the hypnotic whoosh of wave breaks on the shore. Glancing to my right, the silver rear end of…