I’d forgotten that a friendly Canadian gave me her tiki bar sign right off her campsite post in Alberta a couple of summers ago. Here, in the Tip o’ Texas, we’ve been unpacking storage spots in the Airstream that I didn’t realize we had (which is saying something) and finding things like tiki bar signs […]
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Spur-of-the-moment Upgrade
So, we’re an hour away from Brownsville, and while Tracy’s driving, I do a little research, make a couple of calls, and, presto, we change where we’re staying this winter. And I sure hope it’s an upgrade; it certainly costs more. The trouble with last year’s mobile home park is that the decent campsites (aka happenstance […]
Things That Move Along the Shore
The land here on Padre Island National Seashore is like one long, flat sand dune. We watch northern harriers fly beside the shoreline hunting for rodents and we see crested caracaras perch on the few high spots to peer into the grasses. A healthy-sized coyote stared us down along the road, and (I mentioned this […]
1 Beach, 2 Beach, 3 Beach, Parking Lot
Goal: Spend November working our way down to the Tip o’ Texas via the Gulf Coast, camping right on the beach wherever we can. Reality: Spend November sitting in our tiny trailer listening to a space drama podcast, when not driving around wondering where the heck we’re going to park for the night. I would […]
Attitude Adjustment on the Old Trace
I apologize for my grumpiness back at Muscle Shoals. Seems like everywhere I go lately all I see is misery that privileged white people (me) have inflicted. I needed a reset, and a forest in Mississippi did the trick. The Difference a Campsite Vibe Makes When we left Alabama, we got back on the Natchez […]
Natchez Trace, aka Scary Acorn Trail
Last year when we left TCPC to head to Texas for the winter, we stopped in Nashville and Memphis, which I’d actually like to do again, Memphis because I learned so much about its role in the civil rights movement, and Nashville because I need a do-over with better intel. Still, there’s a lot of […]
Nature Bathing, Social Bathing, Water Bathing at TCPC
There is just no way we would have headed south from Ohio this year without making a repeat stop at the Cumberland Valley Plateau Campground in central Tennessee (TCPC). I wrote about this place something like four separate times during our one-week stay last year, so I’ll try to keep this one short. It’s hard […]
Back to the Mothership, Again
We are once more in Ohio at the Airstream factory and service center for repairs. Yep. We’re here for the fourth or fifth time, not because we keep breaking things (well, there’s that, too), but because this is the only factory and national service center, which means the mechanics here are excellent. And when they […]
Come Along for a Fall Foliage Hike
I’m going walking around Sessions Lake, a reservoir in central Michigan. Want to come? It’s four miles long and winds through the woods and along the shore. And look! Finn’s going to join us. While we’re walking, let’s talk about Finn’s work in physics, in a very basic way. Particle physics is the study of […]
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 […]
