In the town of Watson Lake, Yukon, there are about 80,000 homemade (and stolen) signs nailed up on tall posts by tourists. The phenomenon was begun in the 1940s by a homesick soldier, and now it’s a ritual to leave your own sign here. Tracy started making ours last winter when we camped on the […]
Categories
How the Alaska Highway Is Different
Sure, in the last three years we’ve taken several road-trips through picturesque mountains, with glacier-fed lakes and all manner of wildlife around us. So, how is this trip to Alaska different, at least so far? One Road; Everyone’s on It We’ve just entered Yukon at Watson Lake, which is pretty much the only place you […]
Surprising City Parks
In anticipation of me learning how to use my new camera and of our upcoming trip to Alaska, I’ve changed the layout of the blog to span the full screen so that photos will be larger. The downside is that previous posts now look wonky, with small images that aren’t centered. If you’re looking at […]
Long Travel Days to Bois Brule
We have been booking it lately, and, inexplicably, I feel like we’ve finally arrived. Maybe because this campsite feels like a destination we’d choose, a real camping spot, as opposed to somewhere to meet people or have an appointment or get from Point A to Point B. It took a while to get here, though. […]
Gearing Up (and Down) for Alaska
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 […]
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 […]
Banjo Doesn’t Care Where We Go (We’ve Planned Anyway)
Banjo is always excited to hop into the truck and go, but she’s pretty blasé about the route. There’s no hanging her head out the window with ears blowing in the wind or tongue spattering spit down the truck sides; Banjo sleeps the whole trip. Same deal with our destination: she’ll sniff around the new […]
Inauspicious Start to a Promising Winter
We had one hell of an interlude between camping on the beach near Galveston and landing at our winter spot in Brownsville. Going South The plan had been to beach camp all the way down the Gulf, but we had a follow-up doctor’s appointment in Houston, so we booked at a state park near there […]
What a “Bad” Travel Day Looks Like
We’re in a wonderful location right now, so no worries, but we’ve had a few rough travel days lately. And when I’ve mentioned that to friends, they’ve asked what that means. Here goes. Google Maps: You Get What You Pay For Tracy maps out our route each time we tow the trailer, using several sources. […]
