Even Banjo is impressed with how the Airstream looks now that we’ve washed it! Since Alaska, I’d despaired it would never come clean, but our favorite campground (because our friend Dave runs it) came through for us. We were able to wash it with clean water (no toting buckets of river water one by one […]
Month: September 2023
Camping on the Wall
“The Wall” is what campers call a dirt/gravel stretch of road near Badlands National Park in South Dakota, officially in Buffalo Gap National Grassland. The road runs along the rim of a stretch of steep canyon, with grasslands up to the rim and then far below. I don’t know what my problem was, but I […]
Home, Home on the Range
I’m backtracking a bit, because the prairies of Western Alberta and the grasslands of Montana and Wyoming, and even those of the western edge of South Dakota, have all blended into one big range the last few days. A gorgeous range. Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam. Where the deer and the antelope […]
Three Surveyors and Another Guy
That’s what surveyors call Mt. Rushmore, since Roosevelt was not a surveyor. Surveyors are extremely proud of the foundational role surveying has played in our country, and rightly so. (Warning for extreme grumpiness and ranting.) I gotta say, though, that I approached Mt Rushmore with a cold shoulder. I mean, nearly everyone in this country […]
Alberta into Montana: Seamless Prairies and Big Sky
Western Alberta is astoundingly beautiful. Gently rolling grassland—as far as you can see—for hours of driving. I’m sure we saw lots of cattle and horses, but the land is so vast that they seemed like only a handful scattered around. In some places, the grass was so tall when we drove through that they’d look […]
Alaska Trip Retrospective
After our summer-long trip to Alaska, we’re traveling south through British Columbia, Canada, and the climate, sunlight, ecosystems—really everything—is all changing rapidly. No more alpine or subalpine terrain, and it’s kind of shocking. I shouted out to Tracy when I saw a cow. We both said, “Hey, look at this!” when we had to use the flashlight […]
Down the Cassiar Highway
We’re heading south through far-western Canada along the Cassiar Highway, a relatively new road (1970s) that connects the Alaska Highway to British Columbia. There are a few small First Nations villages on either side, and that’s it. The Cassiar The highway runs through the Cassiar, the Coast, and the Skeena mountain ranges, in a southward river […]
Once More in Alaska for the Bears
(I’m writing this without cell signal and can’t do even the smallest bit of research, so please forgive inaccuracies.) We decided to cross the border one final time, driving down the inside passage—along braided rivers and seemingly endless mountain ranges covered in a new, light layer of powdered snow, plus glaciers peeking out when you’re […]
We Who Carry the Heaviest Loads Win
This entry is part of my personal series on grief, called Wish You Were There, that’s unrelated to travel. My mom and her sister and brother used to argue over who was going to pay the bill when we would eat out together. We’d be at Uncle Buggs’ favorite restaurant in Richmond, “Peking,” and my mom […]
