The forecast was sleet, so we stayed longer in Canyon Lake. The next day the weather was perfect. We drove, grilled some beef with Allison and Bret, and for the first time saw “The Big Lebowski”. You remember the lines – Walter (John Goodman) says, over and over ‘Shut * * up, Donny.’ Or in […]
Read MoreThe past few days we’ve camped on a Corps of Engineers park called Canyon Lake. It’s about 25 miles southwest of San Marcos, the birthplace of Baseball Hall of Famer Greg Maddux, and workplace of Aquarena Springs’ inimitable Ralph the Diving Pig. The water is a deep blue thanks to its limestone floor and 50 […]
Read MoreYou don’t see a lot of television while full-time RV-ing. It’s limited to over the airwaves reception, but in populated areas there’s way more TV than you would expect. We are in Texas in political campaign season, blessed with 30 stations: We’ve always been lucky. Kat and I lived near Dallas between 1995 and […]
Read MoreWe completed our end cap cleanup Wednesday. It took longer than expected; the work was more exhausting than I had imagined possible, and we surely couldn’t have done it without son Bret’s help. Turns out we didn’t nickname him Moose for nothing. Now that the clearcoat is gone from the endcaps we will have to […]
Read MoreThink of what goes into polishing a silver spoon. Now think of how much more there’d be to do if some fool had lacquered that spoon, and many years later corrosion got under the protective film. And now, let’s pretend the spoon is 28 feet long and 9 feet high.
Read MoreYellow lines on the highway are a sign that has no meaning in Texas. Some dope in a compact car passed us over a double yellow, pulling into the right lane after topping a hill that I, in a tall truck, could not see over, and then ….
Read MoreIt’s over 500 miles from Mandeville to Austin via campgrounds with electric hookups. The first leg this year is Mandy to Ville Platte’s Chicot State Park. The trees are still bare; the weather forecast was dead on: rain and a hard freeze with sleet. No wonder we have the campground to ourselves. It’s the […]
Read MoreAn RV’ers year has four seasons. Two of them require us to be in a climate that’s survivable in a travel trailer: not so cold that our off-the-ground plumbing in endangered, and not so hot that we need to run the air conditioner too much. The third season, September to Christmas spent working for Amazon, […]
Read MoreDale looks way too old compared to the way we remember him, and it just doesn’t seem right. He was on somebody’s news team in Shreveport when we lived there. That hasn’t been so long ago – what’s 18 years? But even with makeup, Dale has aged. We all have.
Read MoreWhen you think ‘Rock Opera’ what comes to mind? For me, as much as I love Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and Dave Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, it’s got to be Tommy, featuring The Who. “He stands like a statue, Becomes part of the machine. Feeling all the bumpers Always plays ‘em […]
Read MoreI’ve wanted to eat at Willie Mae’s Scotch House for years, but it’s been an elusive date.
The neighborhood is impoverished and ancient. It’s safe in daylight, perhaps explaining why they don’t offer dinner. The building is clean inside and out, and decorated in NOLA neighborhood style, with old signs, old pictures, reproductions of locally themed art, and tables as close together as church pews.
Read MoreMy dreams too often are disturbing. They involve problems I didn’t have twenty or thirty years ago, but could have. They put me in situations impossible yet plausible. They make me doubt my own sanity.
Read MoreRv’ers love cheap fun, and we had our fill yesterday with a tour of the Abita Brewery in nearby Abita Springs … the fun is in the tasting, and then in the people-watching.
Read MoreThey teach us to follow procedures, not to try to be Dirty Harry. I always hated that, I thought I was Dirty Harry, until I saw that .45 a foot from my nose….
Read MoreYesterday a new 40’ RV pulling a new olive Jeep rolled into Fontainebleau. This was remarkable only because he was playing “Dixie” over external speakers. Might this be Phil or Silas? Naw, it was just some rich guy with ties to Ole Miss. After a few minutes it occurred to me that Phil, Si, and […]
Read MoreSaturday afternoon we arrived at site 127 in Fontainebleau State Park outside Mandeville, LA. The place feels familiar, and should: this was our very first campsite a year ago. The camp host, John Deere, and his wife, Grumley, are back doing their duties. Pink remembers the best dog walking routes. I know where the grocery […]
Read MoreNew Year’s Eve found us pulling the Kat’s Cradle 200 miles from an armpit of a campground outside Birmingham to the luxury of Timberland RV Park on the shores of Ross Barnett Reservoir near Jackson, Mississippi. 200 miles is about our maximum pull, and after two hours each of watching for maniacs to do stupid […]
Read MoreWe paused at the Chattanooga Camping World to get our Airstream’s wheel bearings re-packed. We learned we need a new tire and bearings for one wheel, because the cover cap came off, we lost our grease and burned up those bearings. The wheel then rode a bit sideways and wore out the tread on the […]
Read MoreWe plus daughter Stephanie cooked Christmas dinner for ten at Julee’s home in Newport, TN (not the home of the Jazz Festival). We roasted beef rib, Jule did a turkey, and together we prepared sides of green beans with bacon, garlicky potatoes, cranberry relish, velvet cake, pecan pie, and six bottles of Cristalino Spanish […]
Read MoreWe all has our worries now and then, but try being a cancer survivor with no medical insurance. Many of mine just took that Midnight Train to Georgia.
Read MoreWorkkampers are leaving Heartland RV Park. Four neighbors have already left; Saturday morning we’ll pull out for Tennessee. We’re going to camp along the French Broad River and have Christmas dinner with our old bud New Orleans Julee in Newport, TN. We’ll stir up some clam chowder, and cook a rib roast with potatoes and […]
Read MoreReader K.D., the Big Kahuna, suggested we discuss Kat’s Amazon experience, so we shall. They gave Kat her last day notice: it’s Thursday, December 19. She survived the fifty and sixty hour weeks, the diet of sack lunches, and the ten to thirteen miles of walking every work day. She figured out a solution to […]
Read MoreWeeks ago I talked of another blog on the science behind the mushrooms planted below the Bernheim Forest parking lot. I’ve done my research. One of the problems with suburban development is water pollution from automobiles. Most of it is motor oil, gasoline, and grease, but brake and transmission fluids nurture very few […]
Read MoreAround 5:00 p.m, June 1, 1971, I was given a $45 ticket for an expired inspection sticker. That was a lot of money back then. My sticker had been valid up until the day before. For the two weeks before that I had been pulling ticks and scratching redbugs while enduring the Louisiana 156th Infantry’s […]
Read MoreAfter traveling from March to September, life feels slower, yet busier in Campbellsville. Kat works 50 or 60 hours a week at Amazon, and it seems like I work at least 50 while trailer-keeping, shopping, cooking, and struggling to get affordable health care. There’s time to write, but not so much to write about. I’ve […]
Read MoreHow is your ACA application going? I’m betting better than ours. I’m still trying to get our application accepted the way I submitted it. There was a one digit error in my SS number, and in Kentucky’s website, once an application is e-signed you can’t change your SSN. Perhaps because of that error I […]
Read MoreWednesday, Thanksgiving’s eve, saw Campbellsville’s first measurable snowfall. It has already been colder here than the typical north Louisiana January, and we’ve seen snow with no accumulations. Fitting perhaps that November 27 marked the official opening of the Christmas season for a musical reason: In Kroger I heard Burl Ives doing my second favorite seasonal […]
Read MoreThe Nov. 25 edition of Sports Illustrated has an excellent story on A. J. McCarron, Alabama’s two-time National Championship quarterback. He’s has been very effective, with a record of 35-2 in those games. There’s a good chance the Tide wins out this year, and if they do, McCarron will be among the very few quarterbacks […]
Read MoreI’m on Social Security, I have a passport, and an honorable discharge. The NSA knows I’m a citizen. But some how, some way, Kentucky is not so sure.
Read MoreOne of the better things about getting old (surpassed by the deferral of its alternative) is an appreciation for certain things which once seemed boring or even distasteful. Classical music, sautéed onions, and Scotch whisky are at the top of my list. Not far down is viewing the fall colors, a/k/a leaf peeping. We delighted […]
Read MoreThe poor stand to get free health insurance in states that expand Medicaid, but if their state does not expand it, they get nothing.
Read MoreNo matter how worthy the goal nor how well written the law, neither can pre-empt the realities of the human workplace. The Affordable Care Act requires that every insurer who offers coverage through healthcare exchanges offer one or more multi-state plans that will have network providers in 30 states. One of my home states, […]
Read MoreWe paid a visit to Mammoth Cave National Park Friday. That was the first day the park was fully operational after that ridiculous government shutdown. I figured there would be nobody at the park. I was wrong. It was busy. When we hit a National Park I usually do a lot of homework on […]
Read MoreI’ve never had an original thought. I’ve never written an original sentence. And to lift an idea from Kurt Vonnegut, I will never write Beethoven’s 10th symphony.
Read MoreFocus on Silver plans, because they’re the only ones that if qualified for a tax subsidy often also result in lower deductibles, co-pays, and coinsurance.
Read MoreThe beans start cooking at 6:00 each morning and smell delicious all day. Talented local performers will entertain during the supper served by local youth (all the beans & cornbread you can eat, plus sorghum cake & more!).
Read More…you have absolutely no idea how difficult it is to make beds in the confined space of an Airstream!
The best reason I’ve not written is that your life is now officially more entertaining than mine.
Read MoreThe Affordable Care Act will have change American life… it will make early retirement much more appealing by disconnecting the workplace from medical care…if your primary income source is some combination of Social Security, a private pension, work camping jobs, and your savings/IRA, you are very likely to get a reduced rate on your insurance.
Read MoreWe are at home in a new strange place called Campbellsville, Kentucky. Kat has a three month gig here with Amazon. Pink and I are looking forward to some still time, and Kat gets to rejoin the rat race if just for a while. But maybe she won’t race. In most jobs there is a […]
Read MoreLike a few thousand others, I am a graduate of North Caddo High School. Two of those other grads regularly appear on television and their current likenesses adorn countless sweatshirts and tees sold in Wal-Mart: They are Phil and Si Robertson, now famous for Duck Dynasty.
Read MoreI don’t have Joey Votto on any of my teams, but next year I’m gonna draft him for his music: “Paint It Black” by the Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World, The Rolling Stones.
Read MoreEvery Airstreamer is expected at some point in his RV’ng life to visit the factory in Jackson Center, Ohio. There’s a plant tour five days a week, with the best, most extensive one saved for Fridays after most of the production workers have called it a week. Jackson Center is just six miles off the […]
Read MoreWith something approximating sadness we left Michigan. We loved the UP and liked the casino parks, but the Lower Peninsula, which comprises most of the state, is not that interesting and could pass for Monroe or Baton Rouge, except in winter. The next stop was the Maumee Bay campground just outside Toledo, Ohio. Ohio state […]
Read MoreYou do without a few things while full time RV’ing, but you learn to cope with their absence easier than you might think. Sleep deprivation is a true but inverse example. Cable television is a true and good example. I will have to find a way to watch LSU football, but other than that […]
Read MoreWe survived the crossing of the long and narrow Mackinac Bridge and passed up a third rate city park to enjoy the panache and rolled-back prices of the Alpena WalMart. The next day we left early in route for the Saganing Chippewa casino in Standish, Michigan. Their RV park was hard to find, what with […]
Read MoreOn our last night in Sault Ste. Marie I just knew my gambling luck was going to change. There is no way to reconcile this belief with an intellectual acceptance of the Monte Carlo Fallacy. Nonetheless, I am fully capable of holding mutually exclusive ideas as equal truths. We did visit the casino. I played […]
Read MoreWe pulled the AirStream south to the bottom of the UP and the Kewadin Casino in St. Ignace. This Saint is an old port town on the shores of Lake Huron, another huge, clear freshwater lake that makes its own weather. This casino has a fine view of the lake, if anyone would look. They […]
Read MoreKat’s gig with Amazon in Kentucky begins September 23. We’re 600 miles from Campbellsville with a couple of stops along the shores of Michigan’s great lakes scheduled. We’ll camp at another casino or two on the road south, maybe visit the AirStream factory in Ohio, and probably catch a baseball game in Cincinnati. There are […]
Read MoreWe’re now as close to Canada as Brownsville is to Mexico. But we can’t cross this border: firearms are verboten in Canada, or I should say, defendu. The north shore of the St. Mary’s River looks about the same as our side, just newer and shinier. Can such things be? Home for the next few […]
Read MoreThere’s a nice little wetland under Federal protection just 45 miles east of Bay Furnace, and we had to go there. Seney is home to a few nesting pairs of endangered loons and trumpeter swans, neither of which have yet made it to our life list of Observed Birds. We went. Our campground is a […]
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Life on the Blue Highways 