Several friends have asked for more details on where we camp (how we find spots, what they’re like, who are our neighbors, etc.). Right now, we’re at an especially quiet, lovely national forest campground near Yellowstone, so this is a great example. It’s the Gallatin National Forest, which is in the same Forest where we […]
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Most Excellent Free Campground
(Marred by Racists Hate-mongers) After we left Lake Koocanusa, we drove down that lovely, long, valley lake, past Libby Dam, and into a Corps of Engineers campground right on the Kootenay River near the town of Libby, Montana. It’s a practically perfect campground. It’s one paved oval road, with level pull-through spots right on the […]
Prairies and a Petrified Forest
Goodbye North Unit of Teddy Roosevelt’s Park I’ve been looking forward to getting out west for a year and three months now, so, in a way, this place has been a dream come true. And by “this place” I mean both the North Unit campground and the park that we’ve driven through and hiked. As […]
Teddy Roosevelt’s North Dakota
We’re camped right outside the Theodore Roosevelt National Park North Unit, which is in western North Dakota. This isn’t pure badlands like in South Dakota; there is a lot of green here, and the Little Missouri River runs through the park. I think the contrast between the sage brush, green scrub, and grassy prairies and […]
Banjo Fords the Mississippi Headwaters
You guys know that Tracy used to take September off work to kayak a different section of the Mississippi each year. He moved on to major lakes only after he’d reached his goal of kayaking 1,000 miles of the river. Seriously. One-thousand miles. He paddled a large part of the upper Mississippi, but he never […]
Rhymes with Phenomenon
We finally entered the UP of Michigan via the exciting route (last year we came up through Wisconsin, which is beautiful but not as dramatic), crossing the Mackinac Bridge that spans Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Our campsite is at the Tahquamenon Falls State Park, this time in the rustic campground (no hook-ups and no […]
Old Farm, New Plan
On our way to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, we stopped at a little family farm we’d found through Harvest Hosts. This one’s a bit like parking in some stranger’s paddock by their barn instead of at an actual business, but thank goodness for small farms and small businesses like this one. We didn’t go for an […]
Dear Diary,
Saturday, June 26, 6:00 am I’ve just woken up on a someone else’s mattress on the floor of an empty bedroom in an apartment I don’t know. And I’m elated! Why, is that, dear diary? Because this empty bedroom is in my son’s summer apartment, and I had a sleepover with him last night. Yes, that could […]
Backtracking to Michigan
Our tour around Iowa to visit Tracy’s peeps has (sadly) ended, but now we’re backtracking east to Michigan to visit Finn in his new digs at grad school. So, once again, we’re uncharacteristically booking it down the road. We’ve headed from Iowa to Illinois to Indiana to Michigan. Our First Fairgrounds Stay I hadn’t thought about […]
Iowa all over the Place
Iowa is a big state (to me at least, with its big sky and vast farms), but we always manage to hit several towns when we’re here. Below are shots from Elkader, Harper’s Ferry, Cedar Falls, and Waterloo. The Meeter’s Herb Garden Our last couple of days in Elkader we spent doing maintenance work on […]
