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…
Osborne House, Queen Victoria’s Eden
It had been raining almost continually for weeks when, in October of 1844, the young Queen Victoria and her beloved Prince Albert sailed across the Solent and approached the private estate on the northeast coast…
**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…
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…
You Make the Road by Walking It (or Talking It?)
Sometimes direction of travel is self-evident. In alternate moments a small nudge, a chance meeting, or a wrinkle in time opens up doors onto undiscovered roads. My brother, Bryan, texted me one day as we…
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.…
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…
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…
Scene Along the Road 3: Severe Storm Warning
by Ruth Tornado warnings brought our tiny cavalcade of one to a halt outside of Hutchinson, Kansas (“Hutch” to the locals). We were headed for a nearby campground, but thanks to our NOAA weather app,…
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…
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’…
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…
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,…
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…
If you read this, we’ll have to kill you
Ruth here, finally chiming in, because this place is just too magical not to share. Tell no one. We’ve spent the past three nights at Emma Wood State Beach, just outside Ventura, CA. That doesn’t…