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.…
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,…
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 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…
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
ZephyrosAh, 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 experience,…
“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.…
Cycling full circle, life and death in the eternal NOW
We arrived back to home base, one cycle completed, and you will not be bored with numerical mileage and travel details. Doctor visits, and “home base” business, most complicated from the road, would fall into…
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…
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.…
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…
Oglethorpe’s Savannah Vision: Part 1
Savannah, Georgia is a stunning gem of a city that has as its progenitor a man that set in motion a cascade of events placing this locale apart from any city in America, perhaps the…
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…
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’…
One short story, above 25 stories, above 40 centuries, on the bottom of the ocean, 265 million years ago…or…
Long roads: short thoughts I wake in the middle of the night to the sound of the wind beating our aluminum trailer skin, and crack an eye to watch it blow through curtains, carrying memories…
More Roadside America: The Great State of Texas
By Ruth Who knew there were so many roadside oddities to see, not only in this country, but just here in Texas? Let’s begin with Marfa Famed for the Marfa Lights (which were explained years…
Smiling Seniors Siren Saga
Picture, if you will: An RV park that appears on the shimmering horizon, beckoning you to an oasis of organization and security from the wilds of BLM camping. Tanks are in need of dumping and…
Downtown Drug Deal?
Ruth and I drove into Tucson to celebrate a long lost connection with my brother Bryan, his wife Karri, and their son Joshua, at the popular downtown Mexican eatery, La Poca Cosa. We arrived a bit…
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…
Inside a T. rex, The Historama!, and what is The Thing?: Getting lost in Roadside America
By Ruth Webster’s dictionary defines kitsch as: “Something that appeals to popular or lowbrow taste and is often of poor quality.” Well, YES! But what Webster’s doesn’t tell you is that, when it comes to…
Ajo, Sonoran Desert, and The Border Patrol
We barreled down the long desert highway, wipers straining against wind and rain gusts, holding tight to the center of the road against the onslaught of semis streaming from Mexico, our 8-foot wide trailer on…
Quartzsite, Arizona
Driving into Quartzsite, one is at first struck with the specter of a vast hive of humanity’s industry: the ebb and flow of foraging, building, prospecting, constructing, provisioning, transitioning, connecting with new and old friends,…
Anza-Borrego Desert and Borrego Springs: The town out of time
The Anza-Borrego Desert is a 600,000 acre gem hiding in plain sight, nestled deep in the valley west of the Laguna Mountains and framed north and south by the Santa Rosa and Vallecito mountain ranges.…
Hello, and we’re back!
A few of you have commented that you haven’t heard from us in a while. We were in San Diego, celebrating my parents’ 70th wedding anniversary, and got caught up in all the partying—well, as…
Joshua Tree evacuation
Don’t be concerned. No story of danger awaits you, dear reader! Just a play on words… Ten glorious days boondocking—or sometimes known as dry camping—here has gifted us with extreme solitude amidst the sharp borders…
“Where Ya From?”
Perhaps nothing epitomizes the theme of our travels better than this clip from the original Magnificent Seven, staring Yul Brynner.
Road food, diner kitsch, and cooking on the road
(by Ruth) Thursday was a road food day. We started with a late breakfast (lunch?) at Red House BBQ in Tehachapi, CA, about 100 miles from our stockup point in Bakersfield. While Ben took Gyp…