I’m lying on my folding sofa with my iPad on my lap, looking out over water, and there’s a bit of wind, so the water’s choppy and hitting the bulkhead in a splishy-sounding, fast rhythm. In the distance, the sun is rising over the water, and I am all alone out here. So right now, […]
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Neither Fire Ants nor Boy Scouts Stays These Campers from Enjoying the Beach
Another week at another beach state park on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Not just another ho hum, though. Galveston Ferry To start the week off, we drove south from Sea Rim State Park and took the ferry to Galveston Island, which we did last year, but it still was exciting. As we loaded onto […]
Doing All the -ings on the Turkey River
Yep, that’s me, the tiny pink dot in the middle of that wide, shallow river. I’m paddling my heart out there, but I’m also doing the other -ings these days in northeast Iowa. Camping Of course we’re always camping, but this spot feels like real camping, the kind we choose when we can. Normally we’d […]
In Finn’s Town
I’m in East Lansing, Michigan, on our annual fall trip to hang out with Finn during whatever free time he has. Which is tricky, because he has no free time; he’s extra busy prepping for two presentations he’s making later this month at two physics conferences. I have been able to meet him for lunch […]
Indiana Dunes National Park
As usual, Tracy picked out this stop on his own during his many quiet planning afternoons, and when I looked it up on the map, basically as we pulled in, I thought for sure it would suck. It’s on Lake Michigan, yeah, but at the southern tip, close to Chicago and surrounded by cities. […]
City Camping at Little Rock
We are right on the Arkansas River in Little Rock, at a city campground that’s a lot like that one in the French Quarter of New Orleans. It’s basically just an organized parking lot, but it’s within walking and biking distance of most of downtown. What we thought might be a deal-breaker when we pulled […]
Santa Had a Sleigh Wreck
I was riding my bike back from the mailroom here at the RV park in Brownsville, with a couple of Christmas packages strapped to my basket (and by “strapped” I mean teetering one on top of the other behind me, no actual strap involved). The boxes started to shift, I did an ill-considered twist to […]
Trail of Blue Ice
We’re camped in Chugach National Forest, the second-largest in the country, I believe. What’s extra cool is that our campground is nestled among amazingly high mountains and glaciers, all around us. Here I am biking back from the iron ranger where we paid for our campsite for a week. That’s a glacier visible from the […]
They Take Away the Bear Skat to Keep Wedding Gowns Clean
It’s hard to try to wrap your head around how accessible the wilderness is here in Alaska. We’re only an hour’s easy drive from Anchorage, and we’re staying in a national forest campground, not some boondocking spot down a long dirt road. To get to the trail I’m talking about here, for example (the Byron […]
Moose Fix in Anchorage
I’ve had serious moose envy up here in Alaska: everyone is seeing moose and photographing moose and having to stop for moose in the road, everyone but me. I’ve seen a few (okay, five), but it wasn’t until I was biking in the city of Anchorage that I had to get off the trail for […]