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 […]
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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 […]

Home, Home on the Range
I’m backtracking a bit, because the prairies of Western Alberta and the grasslands of Montana and Wyoming, and even those of the western edge of South Dakota, have all blended into one big range the last few days. A gorgeous range. Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam. Where the deer and the antelope […]

Three Surveyors and Another Guy
That’s what surveyors call Mt. Rushmore, since Roosevelt was not a surveyor. Surveyors are extremely proud of the foundational role surveying has played in our country, and rightly so. (Warning for extreme grumpiness and ranting.) I gotta say, though, that I approached Mt Rushmore with a cold shoulder. I mean, nearly everyone in this country […]

Alaska Trip Retrospective
After our summer-long trip to Alaska, we’re traveling south through British Columbia, Canada, and the climate, sunlight, ecosystems—really everything—is all changing rapidly. No more alpine or subalpine terrain, and it’s kind of shocking. I shouted out to Tracy when I saw a cow. We both said, “Hey, look at this!” when we had to use the flashlight […]

Down the Cassiar Highway
We’re heading south through far-western Canada along the Cassiar Highway, a relatively new road (1970s) that connects the Alaska Highway to British Columbia. There are a few small First Nations villages on either side, and that’s it. The Cassiar The highway runs through the Cassiar, the Coast, and the Skeena mountain ranges, in a southward river […]

Once More in Alaska for the Bears
(I’m writing this without cell signal and can’t do even the smallest bit of research, so please forgive inaccuracies.) We decided to cross the border one final time, driving down the inside passage—along braided rivers and seemingly endless mountain ranges covered in a new, light layer of powdered snow, plus glaciers peeking out when you’re […]

Along Kluane Lake
I am beat after a morning of hiking, an afternoon of online trivia (go team Donner Party!), and the heaviness of clouds after one sunny day. So, below are disjointed captions to my photos for this lovely area near Kluane National Park in Yukon. Congden Creek Campground We’re at a Yukon government campground that’s in […]

Experiencing the Kenia Peninsula
The Kenia Peninsula is surrounded by the Gulf of Alaska and Cook Inlet, and it’s a huge tourist destination famous for mountains and glaciers and King Salmon. We’ve avoided camping in the Kenia during the salmon season because of the crowds, but as our Alaska trip is winding down, we had to come down to […]

Kenia Fjords Critters and Views
Here’s more about that boat tour we took from Seward, Alaska, along the Kenai Fjords National Park. It was such a highlight of our summer in Alaska that I want to document as much of it as I can. Previous posts about this one danged day are about the orcas and glaciers we saw. Port […]