It’s about time I tell you about where the heck we are. Stoughton, Wisconsin, is a rural town south of Madison, home of the infamous water tower typo. I believe that paint job missing the second T lasted only a day, but ain’t that something? That still cracks me up. Thanks, Doug! I shouldn’t laugh […]

The Shelly & Doug Fun-o-Meter
A funny thing about me moving to Madison is that it’s the home of a special friend, Doug (not to be confused with the other top Dougs in my life). Why funny? Because Doug and I have been running into each other on and off for 30 years, and now we’re going to live in […]

Eyes of the World
Where a Grateful Dead song, a science theory by a futurist, and this blog all intersect.

Hauling Ass from Colorado to Wisconsin
A four-day trip across the plains, with Charlie Parr as our reward.

An Unlikely Landing Location
You may find this hard to believe, but of every location in this country we could live, I’ve chosen Madison, Wisconsin. (See my previous post on planning to stop traveling.) I swear, I’ve been thinking about a landing place for about three years. Everywhere on this map, we’ve stayed at least one night and we’ve looked around […]

Choosing a Normal Life after Living an Extraordinary One
We’ve had a handful of big changes here in the Tracy and Shelly (and Banjo) world, and they’re happening in a mixed-up, muddled-up order. I’ll tackle them one topic per post. Topic #1: I decided I’m done with life on the road. I wrestled with this decision for ages, thinking I wanted to settle down, […]

From Moosappointment to a Cowboy Count
I have dreams of things I’m going to see in new places, but I’ve learned, of course, that the cool things you see are what you’re not expecting. For example, when I was in Alaska and in the Yukon summer before last, I had a lot of moospectations. I mean, there were signs everywhere telling […]

Creeks, Waterfalls, River Crossings in SW Colorado
A fat marmot and a mountain iris American White Pelicans giving me a thrill (as always) above the Rio Grande Pyramid Banjo says Hey!

How to Capture the Colorado I See
A friend and I had a conversation about the genre of realism; we were talking about painting, but really what we said applies to photography and writing, I think. Our discussion: What is the value of realism in art, and how do you achieve it? Her first reaction was that realism in painting these days […]

West Slope Is the Best Slope
West Slope Is the Best Slope is something people say who live on the Western Slope of Colorado, which I now know (because I’ve asked Tracy a million times) means west of the Continental Divide—and not east of it, which is called the Front Range. We were on the Western Slope at Colorado National Monument […]