We’re at a gorgeous Airstream-only campground (not the one we usually go to, although that’s up soon). This one’s near Roanoke, Virginia, up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so the elevation has cured our heat-dome woes for a bit. What an abrupt change in lifestyle for us! It’s not like we’ve come here from months […]
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Small Precious Things
We’re such the assholes when we pull into a campground. We leave the diesel truck running in the road while we scope out our site. Once in, we crank down jacks with a drill, set up the starlink antenna, put up the tent, add lights. It’s a lot of stuff we disgorge onto our campsite […]
Navigating a Hipcamp in the Heat
This week we’re parked at one of those brewery/winery/event spaces that are so popular with young, Eastcoast families with disposable income, this one near Fredericksburg, Virginia, and we chose it only because we were pretty desperate. It was a last-ditch plan because it’s part of the Harvest Hosts and Hipcamp listings that drive us bonkers: […]
A True Vacation
You know the background here: after two weeks in New York, we turned south to Virginia to wait on a couple of doctors—which’ll determine where we’re going next—and this change of plans meant we had no camping reservations for the summer. We were in a pickle. When my good friend Mary Margaret offered us her […]
Two Bands, Four Styles, Several Surprises, One Happy Me
“Is this the The Other One?” I can’t believe I’m about to ask this of a guy who looks to be the dad of the band we’re watching at a park in Upstate New York. The kids in the band are blaring distorted guitar and screaming vocals; they’re metal in every way. There is no […]
Surprising Watkins Glen
I could tell before we pulled into the campground that I was going to hate this place. Tons of out-of-town traffic, signs and parking lots for shuttles, restaurants and gift shops, all for some bunch of waterfalls or something. But Tracy insisted I go on a certain short hike he’d been on years ago. He […]
The Absolute Freaking Weirdness of this Lifestyle
This hometown week on the Friends and Family Tour ‘24 has been a honking-big, tangled-up knot of red-hot emotions. It’s not just been about seeing people I haven’t seen in years. It’s been about being struck by aging (and in a flash of recognition that really should be hidden). It’s been about cramming what we’ve […]
Our Fav Happy Hour Lives on in Delaware
This story began with a coupon book full of a year’s worth of deals at a brewery. This was no ordinary coupon book, though. See, back in Bethesda, Maryland, Tracy and I used to meet friends Bob and Ben after work occasionally for a beer. One day, Bob and Tracy bought Ben and me special […]
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 […]
For Itinerants, We Sure Settle Down Well
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 […]
