We’re in Tracy’s hometown, and I tell you what. You know when you’re driving through someone’s old stomping grounds and at every corner they say things like, “Well that entire complex is new,” and “I think my dad had a special dinner there once,” and it goes on and on and is annoying? I actually […]
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Photos from Des Moines
We leave here tomorrow, and I can’t sleep because we stayed up late playing that Firefly board game. It wasn’t until we were cleaning it up that I saw a severe storm on the radar, so we had to pack away all the outside living room stuff while being pelted by moths and beatles in […]
Old Ties and Companions
The title here is from a Mandolin Orange song with lyrics that are quite melancholy, but the music and title make me think warmly about old friends, so it works here. The first time I drove up to Iowa with Tracy, I was overwhelmed by his high-school friends: their sheer number, how many of them […]
It’s Hard to Photograph a Prairie
Especially when a certain someone is wearing a ginormous hat to ward off mosquitos and insists on getting in the middle of the photo. It’s also hard because there’s something about the whole of the prairie, with all the different flowers and grasses, that I can’t capture on my phone. You’ll just have to see […]
Iowa Mead? Yes Please.
This place. I don’t want to spend any more time on my laptop writing this entry than I have to because it takes away from my time gazing at the green land and blue sky. Everywhere. So I’ll just describe my photos briefly. East Grove Farms These ~800 acres have been in the same family […]
Lincoln’s New Salem
As we make our way to Iowa and Wisconsin, we’re sticking to our plan to stay at campgrounds for the weekends so we know we have a sure-fire camping site for Friday and Saturday nights when campgrounds are often full. The pattern is to arrive Wednesday or Thursday to get a good spot and then […]
Our First Harvest Host Stay
Aka No Alpaca but Other Cutie-pie Animals Last night was our first—and fabulous—experience using our membership with Harvest Hosts. The way this works is we pay an annual fee to this organization, and they give us access to their network of businesses that welcome RVers to park with them overnight for free. What the businesses get […]
Airstreamers’ Mecca
There’s only one factory in the world that makes the iconic Airstream, and we visited it early in our travels because our Firefly needed tweaking—a handful of problems she came off the factory floor with that were under warrantee. So when we got a coveted appointment for servicing, we high-tailed it to Jackson Center, Ohio, […]
To See America, You See Americans
I thought I was done thinking about Shawnee here in southern Ohio, but I’ve got one last entry about the weekend in this campground. Things Tracy and I have said just in the last 24 hours: I never thought I’d want to call the police twice in one week. I hope that entire family […]
AM Hikes, PM Lounge
This place, Ohio’s Shawnee State Park, is really growing on me. On the advice of a couple of friends (hi, Melissa M!), I’m reading Blue Highways by a fellow named Least Heat-Moon. He reminds me how travelers set themselves up for failure by assuming what a place will be like before they get there. Perhaps […]
