We’ve got two weeks before we cross into Canada and start our journey north, which means that our stops these days are all about last-minute Alaska provisions. Aka: buying stuff! For people who don’t even live in a house, we sure do buy a lot of household goods. Seriously, this is the haul waiting for […]
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Warm Friends in Cold Places
We’d just pulled into a casino parking lot in Altoona, Iowa, and were setting up inside when a security guard knocked on the trailer door. We brace for trouble: After having driven around the huge casino several times, we’d chosen a quiet lot over by the horse track instead of the designated (and full) RV […]
Update on that Wind and Water Business
This is the screenshot I sent Melanie and Doug last night while Tracy and I were driving east through the top of Missouri. I thought we were headed to that red star just out of the severe weather zones, but I wasn’t quite sure. You see, Tracy was blaring The Von Bondie on the truck […]
Misadventures with Wind and Water
Well, the water was a mishap; the wind was a near disaster. Flying Kayaks We were driving away from a big storm in Oklahoma and Kansas, into an area with less risk of hail and tornadoes in Missouri. There was still wind though, for sure: we’d had 45-mph gusts in the sketchy town park we’d […]
On One Block of Tulsa
I’m so grateful that someone I’ve never met named Jennifer was reading this blog and suggested we stop in her town; otherwise we would have driven past this gem of a city. Tulsa has a complex history: the Creek people, the oil boom, the Dust Bowl, the race riots. We listened to stories about some […]
I Got the Bigger Half
That’s what my friend, Karen, and I used to say when we were little to my mom as she fixed us lunch. “I want the bigger half!” My mom tried to explain that that’s not how “half” works, but we didn’t care. We were having fun being together and just wanted something to say about […]
Hello, North Texas
Just a quick post here, as our first day near Dallas/Ft. Worth is full of errands so I should get going. Hico That top image is from the small town of Hico, where we spent one night on our way north from Austin. It’s a super charming town, with a revitalized main street and shopping […]
Highs, Lows, and Weird in ATX
There is so much about Austin, Texas, that maybe once was weird but now is American cliche. Young people with long, groomed beards and handlebar mustaches. Statement eyeglass frames, cowboy boots with 70s-style jumpsuits. Putting your toddler in a t-shirt with a portrait of Ruth Badger Ginsberg on it. As I say anytime I start […]
Austin = D.C. with Cowboy Hats
I joked last night to Tracy that Austin, Texas, seems just like Washington, D.C. but with different hats. He looked around, at the hordes of sweaty soccer players and the hipster parents with feral children—all at the brewery where we were sitting—and he totally agreed. Except that the only cowboy hats around were on the […]
What 10 Million Bats Looks Like
They don’t look like anything I can describe, is what they look like. There is no way to capture in a photograph, or even a video, the enormity and beauty of this many animals moving all at once, together as a colony and individually as mammals, feeding. They fly together, and they fly into each […]
