They don’t look like anything I can describe, is what they look like. There is no way to capture in a photograph, or even a video, the enormity and beauty of this many animals moving all at once, together as a colony and individually as mammals, feeding. They fly together, and they fly into each […]
Author: Shelly
Former nomad, currently adjusting.
Hiking Texas’ Hill Country
My Texan friend, Karen, told me that this central region (the Edwards Plateau) is lovely, and right she is; it’s unlike any part of Texas we’ve seen. Not to imply Texas is generally unlovely, but this area is special. We’re in Garner State Park, along the Rio Frio, west of San Antonio. Right now it’s […]
I’ll Meet You at the Gator, But First I Gotta Get Around This Turkey
I texted that to Tracy yesterday afternoon while we were both hiking here at Choke Canyon State Park in south Texas. He was up ahead, and he’d found an alligator in a shallow part of the lake, so he texted me a heads-up in case I wanted to see. I did! In my rush, I […]
Crafty Nomad (kind of)
It’s a chilly, rainy day in south Texas, so I’m looking around inside for something to do that’s moderately productive. This is where “craft” enters my vocabulary; in my before life I used that word only after “beer.” Another oddity: I have time on my hands but very little space. I can’t garden, or do […]
On the Road Again 🎶
And man does it feel good. Yesterday, we finally pulled out of Brownsville, Texas, and drove north for a couple of hours, including through a customs checkpoint where the dude with the gun glanced in Tracy’s window then said to him, “Just you and the two dogs then, huh.” I usually keep quiet in these […]
Banjo Doesn’t Care Where We Go (We’ve Planned Anyway)
Banjo is always excited to hop into the truck and go, but she’s pretty blasé about the route. There’s no hanging her head out the window with ears blowing in the wind or tongue spattering spit down the truck sides; Banjo sleeps the whole trip. Same deal with our destination: she’ll sniff around the new […]
Fixing to Get
Yes, that’s the Airstream not in our site at Honeydale Park. For the first time in almost three months, we towed her out, but not for the spring leg of 2023 traveling. We were checking off the final, major item on our to-do list here this winter, which was to get new tires on the […]
That Cracker Dog’s Gonna Flop Bot (and other family sayings)
This entry is part of my personal series on grief, called Wish You Were There, that’s unrelated to travel. Turns out those two phrases did not originate with my family; we’re all plagiarizers! It was a character in All Creatures Great and Small who used to say that her dog running around like crazy was […]
Be Glad You Missed the Grateful Grannies
That’s the name a neighbor and I chose for our karaoke duo—see, we’re grey-haired ladies singing Grateful Dead songs in front of strangers, and not well, either. So we had to make fun of ourselves from the get-go. Did you know that if you type in the name of a song on YouTube plus “karaoke,” […]
The Warm and Lively Colors of Charro Days
I looked up the traditional colors you see in Mexican culture so that I’d know what to call them, and I found “warm and lively.” Perfect! Although, the day we stood in the sun to watch the Charro Days parade was more like hot and lively. It’s still February though, so for folks who are […]
