Maybe 90% of the RVs we see are the same brown/white or grey/white standard campers with slides. They have different model names on them, but there are only a handful of manufacturers out there, and to me they’re all basically the same. I call them Brown RVs (my sister used to say that brown is […]
Month: September 2020
“The Show” Reunites!
Flashback The setting: 1978, a colonial home in rural Virginia: the living room has a stone hearth and stone benches surrounding a large fireplace. The characters: Two 10-year-old girls with a lot of time on their hands. The music: 45 RPM records on a turntable in the corner, playing I Will Survive, Cats in the […]
I Can See Why People Get Strange Here
Both Army Corps of Engineers campsites where we’ve stayed in Arkansas (plus the last one in Missouri) the past couple of weeks have been downstream of flood-control reservoirs. And locals have complained to us that the towns upriver of them get precedence when it comes to control, whereas they get the flooding. Here at this […]
A Break from Prose
Finally, U.S. news items have broken my spirit—as well as being surrounded by Trump yard signs and photoshopped flags and stand-up dolls and his name in sidewalk chalk on campground drives. When I’ve been writing cheerfully I haven’t been disingenuous—I am enjoying this adventure. But the news cannot be ignored, and my silly little travel […]
Come along for a Travel Day
Join me as we leave our two-night campsite at Bull Shoals Lake, Arkansas, and tow our home to our next stay for five nights at Nimrod Lake, also in Arkansas but a little south, on our way to Texas. Don’t be fooled by the three-hour driving time. Pack up Inside It’s about 9 am, and […]
They Call Me the Breeze; I Keep Blowin’ Down the Road
You’d have to know me pretty well to figure out why me having a Lynyrd Skynyrd song in my head would make me feel like my mom. I don’t like the band. I don’t even know how to spell the band’s name (and it’s weird that spellcheck in WordPress does). But like my mom, no […]
You Can’t Choose Your Neighbors, Either
The Harper Lee quote is about not being able to choose your family, but it applies just as well to neighbors in campgrounds. Every time we pull in to a new location, we’re in for a surprise about what our site will be like exactly (wooded? sunny? level? small?) but also who our very close […]
Better than Lakes and Sunsets
I’d lost sight of how long it’s been since we saw a friend. Heck, or even had an in-person conversation with someone else that lasted longer than a few seconds. Yesterday’s meet-up was a balm to my soul. Thank you, Tom! Tom’s the reason we came to Missouri, and just a couple of hours hanging […]
Missouri: Where are my warm lakes and bright sunsets?!?
Our last night was at that Swan Lake state park where we stayed just one night, which was thoroughly undocument-worthy. We did pull over in Iowa to make grilled cheese sandwiches (Tracy is brilliant with these, adding toasted dried onion) at lovely little town park. Too bad it was so cold and windy we could […]
Google Maps, Dumpsters, and Other Gripes
The park we’re staying in—for one night on our way through Iowa to Missouri—is beautiful, but we went on only one walk before a storm hit, and I left my phone in the trailer for it. The campground itself is horrendous: basically a gravel parking lot. So, no post for the mis-named Swan Lake State […]
