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Coast to Coast COVID
A two month excursion to a handful of National parks morphed into an 8 month cross-country COVID experience. From Congaree to the Great Smokey Mountains, we were shut out of an underground tour in Mammoth Cave then crying with a bag pipe playing Irish bartender in Hot Springs before high tailing it to Barksdale AFB…
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On the Road Again
Life at home had filled our lives such that waking up in the same place each day felt normal. Family, friends, holidays and special events had kept us wonderfully busy. With a long awaited, mid-February epic Birthday party in the rear-view mirror, the call of the road was strong. New adventure machines were ready to…
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Congaree(ly)
More than a Swamp Not all National Parks are created equal. There’s the Grand Canyon and then there’s a swamp in the middle of South Carolina. To be fair, the fact that there are 11,000 protected acres in the middle of South Carolina is a miracle since most of the eastern seaboard land got used…
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Newton Bald-faced Lie
Newton’s First Law of Motion states that bodies in motion tend to stay in motion and bodies at rest tend to stay at rest. If we have to be honest with ourselves, we binged a few too many streaming series over the past few months, sacked out in our recliners, eating dessert. We were at…
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Clingmans Dome All Alone
There’s no higher vista in Great Smoky Mountain National Park than Clingmans Dome. 6,643 feet. Motorists make a 7 mile, 1,600 foot elevation climb on a paved and winding road to summit parking, then hike 330 feet higher for 360 above-the-treetop views. Appalachian Trailers hike any number of miles through the woods to pop out…
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Life on the road with waterfalls
We’re a bit early to experience Spring in the Smokies. Snowrain showers instead of wildflowers, closed roads and campgrounds, cold nights and warm-ish days make off-the-grid living a challenge when the sun is not quite ready to cooperate. Solar Required Boondocking in cold weather gets you thinking hard about energy usage. Propane does the heavy…
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Smoky Mountain Spring
You don’t know what you don’t know until you know. We thought 8 days in the Smokies would be plenty. We thought Smoky Mountain Spring would be snow-free. We learned. Three campgrounds are open year round – Smokemont in the southeast, Elkmont in the northmiddle and Cades Cove in the northwest. We thought we’d get…
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Social Distancing at Mammoth Cave
If you are a couple of RV’rs driving around the country, you may not have a clue as to what is going on in the day-to-day worlds of politics, economics or current events. Many days we don’t have the 110v electricity needed to power up the flat screen. It hardly matters since we don’t have…
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Health & Happiness in Hot Springs, Arkansas
No Parade Today It was supposed to be Grand Marshalls Cheech Marin and Danny Trejo leading The World’s Shortest St Patricks Day Parade with musical guests Blues Traveler and Foghat of Smoke on the Water fame. Instead it was Brennan at The Grateful Head, playing his Irish flute in eulogy to what he called Hot…
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Gimme Shelter
What does it mean to shelter in place when your place is 30 feet of RV continually moving across the country? COVID-19 made us answer that question. Sure, we knew about the Coronavirus when we departed Maryland, but the DOW JONES was pushing 30,000 and the country was business as usual. Somewhere between the Smoky…
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Barksdale National Park
Barksdale Air Force Base is home to a fleet of B-52 Stratofortress bombers. These B-52’s that fly over our heads each afternoon entered service in 1961 (before we were born) proving age is just a number. A movie star in it’s youth, the B-52 starred in the 1964 Kubrick classic, Dr. Strangelove or, How I…
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Buying the Bayou
When the April camping cancellation email hit the inbox telling us Big Bend National Park is closed til May 11 it was time for Buying the Bayou. Camping cancelled We’d put it off as long as we could, starting with a week, then adding another until we realized that the government was cancelling camping. We’d…
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Gimme a Break
We’re so used to writing about bikes, hikes parks and attractions that it’s hard to write about shelter-in-place life when no adventuring is going on in our tiny existence other than streaming the new season of Ozark! Time killers Last week we were getting into grilling, fishing, bike-mapping the base and playing tennis; doing 3/4…
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Trust me, I watched a how-to YouTube video.
On the seventh anniversary of our Cherry Blossom wedding on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC, we celebrated DIY – Louisiana style. Forget flowers and candy Copper and wool are the traditional gifts in this itchy year; desk stationery being the modern gift. At a balmy 95 degrees, wool was way-out and…
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Lake Harmon-y
It’s been 20 days since Sheri broke her fibula, which was 20 days of nothing more than hobbling to and from the bathhouse, around the commissary and out to sit in a chair on the fishing pier. Now we’re wearing recyclable grocery bags on our faces. We used to be scared of people wearing masks…
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What’s Cookin’
Dr. Cox took full credit for the decision not to plate the broken fibula. He said he sees new bone growth over the past 6-7 weeks and was quite pleased with himself and his advice to Louisiana boot. The break actually happened on March 29 and by our count, that makes 3 weeks, but if…
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How the halloumi are you?
As people who are always on the do, stationary life has forced new lows on us and our blog has suffered in the process. We’re convinced there’s nothing to write about and our lives are very boring but real writers would insist there’s always a story to tell or a situation to opine about, you…
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So, It’s Time to Go
Insights on our time during COVID-19 inspired by the works of Dr. Seuss Finally!We’re off to see glaciersAnd sights we’ve not seenFor in-person experiencesNot TV nor magazine We have $2 buck gas in the tankAnd burning desire in our heartsWe’ll drive ourselves thousands of milesFor these new-to-us parts. We’ve made a choice that’s right for…
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Heartland Happy
Two days and 688 miles later, with Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri in the rear view mirror, we’re smack dab in the middle of the country in Hamburg, Iowa. It is small town America all the time. The only large population center we passed in 700 miles was Kansas City, Missouri or Kansas – not sure…
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Wayne’s World @Porter Sculpture Park
An iron Bull Head as big as Teddy’s on Mt. Rushmore looms over I-90 in Montrose South Dakota, 20 miles west of Sioux Falls. We saw it last year, traveling from the Badlands en route to Minnesota. First you see the Iron Horse, 50,000 pounds of welded steel railroad plates and then the Bull comes…
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Badlands Birthdays
We arrived at the Red Trail Vineyard in Buffalo, North Dakota just in time to catch owner Rodney for a tasting and storytelling session before he departed to Fargo for friends, ribs, and some Red Trail wine we imagine. Harvest Hosts is turning out to be a joyful respite from the road. These small business…
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TRNP News
(Medora, ND)In braking news today, drivers on the North Unit loop of Teddy Roosevelt National Park were gridlocked by herds of bison who have taken control of the roads in the absence of tourists. No park rangers were on site for comment, but trails were open and restrooms flush with toilet paper and hand sanitizer.…
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Wayfarers Landing
It’s been 24 hours of heavy rain here in Bigfork, Montana. They call it a Derecho – a big ass storm that’s long, wide and traveling. News reports say it may be the first in history to cross the continental divide. Of course it is. It’s 2020. Camping in a walk-up spot at the Wayfarers…
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Biking to the Sun Road Glacier
Glacier National Park is in Phase 1 re-opening and while we can’t get to a glacier or the East Side of the park, or most of the West Side or camp in any campgrounds or explore the visitor centers, we’re surprisingly okay with that. It’s like the Royal Taj Indian buffet in Columbia, MD. Sheri…
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Scurry and Plod Attempt Mt Brown
On the second anniversary of walking out of corporate America, we saw no better way to commemorate the event than with walking up 4,325 vertical feet in 5.4 miles and back down again on a whim. TLDR: It didn’t end well, but the memory of it is getting better with time. We honestly lost our…
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Glacier Gone Wild
With East Glacier National Park still closed and West Glacier attractions exhausted, we extended our footprint and made some wild discoveries. Hungry Horse At 564 feet high and 15 miles from West Glacier, Hungry Horse is Dam one of the largest concrete arch dams in the United States, and its morning-glory spillway, with water cascading…
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Coulee-0
Nine out of the Top 10 hikes in Glacier National Park are on the covid-closed East side with no indication of opening. With an on-the-fly itinerary in play we narrowed our options … 200 miles south to Teton and Yellowstone, continuing south thru Colorado and New Mexico through the summer or 800 miles west to…
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Eastern Washington’s Fablands
The Dakotas have their Badlands, we call New Mexico the Radlands and eastern Washingtons’ early settlers named theirs the Scablands, aka “not suitable for farming.” Coulee City crush We did not anticipate spending a long week here in the scablands. Our plan was to pass through on I-90 with a quick photo op at the…
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Northrup and the Vic in Scablands
Was there ever a time when the Grand Canyon was NOT a major tourist destination? We’ve been there a couple of times and it is awe-ways inspiring. It was also hard to find a parking, the trails were crowded and a camping spot was out of the question; those were reserved 11 months in advance.…
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This Seat Is Saved in Coulee
The extensive list of rules for the Coulee City Campground are posted next to the computerized kiosk that accepts bills or credit cards for payment. Pick an empty spot. Park your rig. Pay for your spot. Once paid, you have one hour to establish your camp. It’s so easy to do, and it turns out,…
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North Cascades – The American Alps
North Cascades National Park is one of the least visited National Parks in the lower 48. Judging from the license plates in campgrounds and at trailheads, eight out of 10 visitors are Washingtonians, one is from California and the other is a pick your plate state. Two hundred miles from Seattle to the west or…
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Three Amigos: Ross, Diablo and Jim Creek
After a day of head-in-the-clouds exploring the insurmountable Cascade Pass and Hidden Lakes trails of Marblemount, we backtracked to the National Park treasures of Ross and Diablo Lakes for some grand views from easier to reach places. It’s a 30 mile stretch between Ross Lake and Marble Creek, snaking along the Skagit River, passing the…
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Escape to Mt. Baker
When summer temperatures in Seattle soar into the 70’s, there is nothing else to do to escape the insufferable heat but flee 90 minutes north to Mt. Baker mountain in search of snow. Hopping on that bandwagon, we threw our tenting gear into Boss and left Roxie stowed in her gated Jim Creek Naval Radio…
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Flirtin with Disaster
Mt Rainier could blow its top any day now or it could wait a little while, which in geologic terms could be like 10,000 years. At 14,410 feet, Rainier is the tallest volcano in the Cascades and the most glaciated peak in the lower 48. We took our chances on America’s largest active volcano, flirtin…
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All the way to Tacoma …
“I went from Phoenix, Arizona All the way to Tacoma, Philadelphia, Atlanta, LA …. Steve Miller Band (1976) The world is not all sunshine and waterfalls. Or is that rainbows? The point is, vertical hikes can be mean and nasty and as tough as we are it could beat us to our knees and keep…
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All Cheer Mt Rainier
Carlsbad has its under-otherworldly caverns, Bryce has its spooky hoodoos, Arches has its, well, arches but Rainier doesn’t Have, Rainier IS. Rainier is omnipresent. Whether its lurking in the clouds, looming behind the fog or lighting up the city, Rainier is compass rose in Tacoma Washington. Sunrise Camping The Sunrise Visitor Center is two hours…
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Olympic Alone
Pacific Beach, Washington is sometimes wistful, sometimes dreamy, always pure peace and solitude. There are no crowds or colorful umbrellas; no spread out towels or portable radios. The smell is salt spray instead of SPF and the view is somewhere through the mist. It is a dream world lost in time to the hustle and…
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Hi Hoh, Hi Hoh, It’s off to Forks we go
We never read the books and we didn’t see the movies but our daughters were Twilight teens an when we heard the setting of Forks was a dozen miles from the second most visited site in Olympic National Park, we decided to go vampire and werewolf with a tenting trip in the Hoh rainforest. Following…
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We Get Around, Tacoma
Sometimes you gotta get out of the rainforest, off the beach, down from the mountain and get some urban livin’. Nine miles southwest of Joint Base is downtown Tacoma, home of world renown glass artist Dale Chihuly and launching pad for a get around day trip. Chihuly in the City Although the Museum of Glass…
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Olympic Unplugged
While in Pacific Beach, we discovered that our full-hookup Navy MWR facility had strong, fast WIFI. We made use of Roxie’s built-in high gain router to put all of our devices online. We were so immersed that in no time we were signing up for Showtime free trials and binging Homeland. Back at full-hookup Joint…
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Washington Wrap-up, No Lie!
Washington’s Badlands It’s been almost two months exploring the Evergreen State, showing up at the Grand Coulee Dam on June 22nd where we discovered the Badlands of eastern Washington. Sunny, dry and 70 degrees, it was a long sleeved hiking, biking, golfing and, if we only had one, boating dream. We spent our days at…
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Puttin’ on the Ritz
We left Wednesday morning with the Channeled Scablands in our sights – a 225 mile return to eastern Washington’s Coulee City, maybe play 9 holes at The Vic or take a dip in Baker Lake for old times sake. Ten days and 1446 miles to get from Tacoma Washington to Taos New Mexico or about…
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Yellowstone on a Whim
Three hundred miles east of Ritzville, WA is Drummond, Montana. Peak outdoor season meant that the Montana State Parks were booked from Butte to Billings. When that happens, it is often the small town parks you can depend on. Drummond is another small town in a railroad dominated community where people live spread out and…
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Smoke Gets in Your Eyes at Grand Teton
Our first National Park was a drive by. Yosemite, 2011, after a three day whitewater rafting trip on the wild and scenic Tuolumne River. We had a steak dinner in The Mountain View Dining Room, snapping photos of Yosemite Falls from our table near the window. Our feet never touched a trail. For us, the…
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Taos, Soul of the Southwest
From Yellowstone to Grand Teton to the Whiskey Basin of Dubois, western Wyoming is a place we could disappear for awhile. Like Washington state. We pulled off the quick get- to-Taos trip with loose plans versus reservations. If we were left wanting a deeper dive, the silver lining is that we are now familiar In-Real-Life…
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True Grit at Great Sand Dunes National Park
If you’re thinking Sand Dune, you might be thinking long-ass walk to the beach or riding a camel while wearing a white robe and Aladdin headwrap. At Great Sand Dunes in central Colorado it’s neither. A prevailing westerly wind whips across the sprawling south central Colorado plain sitting more than 7,000 feet above sea level.…
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Trippin’ through Taos
Taos, New Mexico is a high desert arts community in the foothills of the Carson National Forest below the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. A four season destination, Taos is the temperate hub to access Rio Grande water sports, Rocky Mountain black diamond ski slopes, historical Indian Pueblos and the future of off-grid sustainable housing at…
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Fade to Black Canyon
Utah’s Mighty Five National Parks is an ad campaign. Arizona’s Grand Canyon as a summer vacation destination is a product of a tourism bureau. State borders have been politically penciled in on a map. Western states separately promote their respective greatest natural wonders in a cut-up, disjointed series of signs, pamphlets, commercials and promotions. A…
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USAFA Vacation
With more than 15,000 Boss odometer miles on this March-to-now 2020 crisscross-the -country adventure, we’ve earned a Ph.D. in how to flex travel without planned routes and reservations, avoid extreme heat, wildfires and hurricanes, cross Smokey, Rocky and Cascady mountain ranges, recreate in breathtaking high altitudes, visit 15 National Parks and 16 states, write 50+…
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Rocky Mountain High, Cuyahoga Valley Low
If Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is less known to the general public, then the parks on the other side of the Rocky Mountains – those that butt up against Denver – are known far too well. The cooler fall weather gets the Aspen trees to changing colors, the elk to migrating, and…
Sheric Adventures
Escape Artists