30 years ago I tore some cartilage and eventually had arthroscopy to smooth it out. 15 years ago I first noticed pain climbing stairs. X-rays revealed bone on bone contact where cartilage should intercede: “The only solution for this is knee replacement. We should do it soon.” I had a wise internist who thought otherwise. […]
Read More
After six Februarys of camping within 30 miles of the French Quarter, not to mention 15 years of working in walking distance of those 156 blocks, I have come to realize that Kat and I have not dined at some of the classic NOLA restaurants. Emeril’s and Prudhomme’s various locations blew in like hurricanes, only […]
Read More
Kat the lady mayor, the cat Brunswick, and Jackson (me, myself, and I), just wound up our annual two week visit to Fontainebleau SP in Mandeville, LA. Six years back this was our first experience living in 200 square feet, unless you count college dorms, where we did not live together, or even in the […]
Read More
It doesn’t get a whole lot better than this. We sit here in something like solitude, listening to Sam Cooke and Ben E. King, sipping world class Pinot Grigio box wine, while digesting a feast of grilled tuna with creamy horseradish sauce and some side swordfish along with shrimp fried rice. To be honest with […]
Read More
We are moving into the last days before our political Armageddon or Deliverance, alternate outcomes that will become clear perhaps as soon as the early hours of November 7. Trump is poking his base with a stick and wooing the undecideds with fear and loathing of an immigrant invasion. He is not only doing this […]
Read More
The Sunday funnies have been wonderful lately. The one above recaps Kavanaugh’s second hearing by speculating on juvenile emotions that are not so unlikely. The tiny selection following is a commentary on our misruled nation, and we mean it as a bugle call to all Americans who know we can do better than we are […]
Read More
We are back in Campbellsville earning the bread to fund next year’s travels. While C’ville is a good town for diesel engine work or to get your trailer’s sofa re-upholstered, it does little to inspire the would-be writer. So I will fall back on the sorry lot that has become our body politic in the […]
Read More
We have not posted a blog in quite a while, being occupied with helping long-time friends clear out one of their dwellings for an imminent sale, and then with getting Kat’s Cradle shined up. You might ask “What mentally competent retiree moves furniture?” And “What kind of fool shines up a 20 year old mobile […]
Read More
Kat and I spent half of Independence Day Eve visiting the Four Presidents carved from a mountainside by Gutzon Borglum and a cast of hundreds. Unlike those working on the Crazy Horse monument who plan to need another century or two to complete that project, Gutzon’s Boyz knocked out Rushmore in only fourteen years. Those […]
Read More
Three generations of Polish Americans have been working together just north of Custer, SD, to blast and chip a mountainside into a monument to the spirit of the American Indian. They have turned this project into a lucrative family business, which incidentally is the American Way, if not the Native American way. In 1939 Chief […]
Read More
Five years ago when first we visited Idaho, Coeur d’Alene was a hoped-for destination but one we missed for lack of knowledge on how to find available campgrounds. This time we spent a few days in the area exploring from our base camp at the Coeur d’Alene Casino fifteen miles or so outside of town. […]
Read More
The first picture shown in each of our blogs, the one that precedes the main body of text, is known in WordPress circles as The Featured Image. This one, Mt. Rainier on a perfect summer day, is Kat’s photo of a postcard purchased in the park’s main Visitors Center. We saw the postcard, but throughout […]
Read More
This national park features three different areas of interest, each separated by a drive of roughly two hours. Ruby Beach is in many ways a typical rugged Pacific coast shoreline with waves crashing against huge rocks of volcanic origin. But we have seen a dozen similar beaches in the past few weeks so we skipped […]
Read More
It’s a long, long drive from Netarts Bay to Olympic National Park, and do we ever dislike long pulls. Fort Stevens is a big, well-reviewed campground near Astoria, WA, halfway to Olympic, and it happened to have a four night opening in its newest loop, O, beginning the day we left Netarts Garden RV Camp. […]
Read MoreBeginning with Cannon Beach and Crater Lake, once again you can enlarge the blog’s pictures with a quick left click. Older posts (June 2016 to Cannon Beach)… not yet, maybe not ever, but as El Presidente Pelo Naranja so often says: “We’ll see.”
Read More
Kat, Bugger, and I embarked upon a two-night excursion to Crater Lake National Park, and it made such a powerful impression on the humans I just had to write this while it’s fresh. I came expecting to see the world’s bluest water – if the weather cooperated – and it did. We enjoyed near full […]
Read More
We took a 50 mile drive trip up OR-101 to see one of this state’s most famed beaches. The weather was perfect: sunny, almost warm, and with just a gentle breeze. Wildflowers were exploding; we saw flashy wild rhododendrons, gold and yellow California poppies, those bigger bluebonnet look-alikes called lupines, and the state flower the […]
Read More
I have the pictures and the ideas together for a post called Cannon Beach … but Billy Cannon died this morning, and I have been feeling guilty about by-passing Los Angeles (traffic is even less fun when you’re pulling a 4-ton trailer). And I have not mentioned that northern Pacific coast creature known as Sasquatch. […]
Read More
Today we began our third week based in a nice little RV campground which offers an excellent deal for the month of May along with a nice bay view and all the conveniences of home here, or in Tillamook six miles away. We chose to stop for a while to let spring overtake us, to […]
Read More
Kat and I love Gulf seafood. What we have found from the Pacific has been nearly as good – those big Pacific oysters (the most common variety, and the species canned for refrigerator cases in most of the USA) are too metallic for my taste, fried or raw. Baked with a sauce they are acceptable, […]
Read More
Redwoods National Park casts a mood along the lines of Mirkwood, the dark forest of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Hobbit trilogy, inhabited by giant spiders, overseen by the Eye of Sauron, home of Gollum, a land terrorized by the occasional raid of marauding Orcs. It is damp, mossy, cool when not cold, and packed with […]
Read More
As famed as this park is, we did not know it has a valley section open most of the year, and a higher section that’s closed most of the year. Our visit took place April 13 and 14 and they hadn’t even run snowplows through the mountain passes. So we missed Tuolumne Meadows at […]
Read More
It seems spring has finally overtaken us on our trek north. Outside Sequoia National Park the redbuds are in full bloom, the lupines (which look just like tall bluebonnets) are out in force, and the hills are covered with dark golden flowers the locals know as California poppies. But the ever vigilant Park Service is […]
Read More
Over the years I have enjoyed the company of several black cats. The first was Jinx who mysteriously appeared at our backdoor in Mooringsport. My mom liked cats and Dad tolerated them, outside. He hated the idea of something that buried its poop jumping onto countertops or tables. That’s understandable, but in my dotage I […]
Read More
If you are thinking of visiting Grand Canyon National Park this year it may be too late. Kat and I camped at our favorite boondocking site on FR 302 just south of Tusayan the first week of April. We built a campfire, poured the wine, and prepared dinner. The next morning we savored coffee and […]
Read More
You get two parks here for the price of one. The desert is the northern half of the park; the stone forest is the southern. Neither is exactly a national treasure, but both are interesting as well as auto accessible. Right on the border between north and south stands a ’32 Studebaker marking the site […]
Read MoreI am probably chronologically older than 90% of my fellow Americans, and therefore I expect you kids to have some familiarity with that fine 70’s classic rock band The Eagles. C’mon, you hear them today on the radio, and even in WalMart! Take It Easy is one of their most accessible hits, involving a young […]
Read More
After Santa Rosa we took two days to pull the Sled 350 miles to Bluewater State Park near Prewitt, NM. This is another lovely NM state campground even if at 7,500’ elevation. We haven’t grown our mountain lungs – that requires a month to six weeks – and it doesn’t take much exertion to wear […]
Read MoreIt’s been a mostly quiet winter but we have put some miles between Kat’s Cradle and south Louisiana. Bret and Allison have a new baby, Will, so we camped outside Bryan, TX for three weeks. We did what we could to make a good first impression on a kid who is yet too young to […]
Read More
Life on the Blue Highways carries a cost to its authors. We are homeless, as we no longer have a hometown nor a daily newspaper to land with a WHUMP outside our door. This troubled me for the first four years of our odyssey, and then … WHUMP … an ad popped up in a […]
Read More
17 good people were killed Wednesday in Parkland, FL. CNN reports that the town, the school, the survivors and their families have damn well had enough of “thoughts and prayers”. That’s not a solution. Neither is blaming mental illness. Easy access to military grade weapons strikes me as part of the problem, but there is […]
Read More
Around 10:00 Saturday, our 10th morning at the Gulf Islands National Seashore campground, National Park Service rangers began knocking on doors bearing bad news: everyone has to pack up and leave before 4:00 this afternoon. The campground is closed indefinitely due to lack of funding. Yes, Kat and I were evicted from our paid for […]
Read More
Ten months ago we wrote of the passing of our old friend Walt. He wanted a basic cremation without ceremony. That sounded simple enough. Well, it did until the funeral home delivered a walnut box of cremains. Now what? Julie, his second –ex and lifetime best friend had asked Walt about that. He offered […]
Read MoreKat and I recently became grandparents! Our son Bret and Alli adopted newborn Will just a few weeks ago. Yes they are currently overwhelmed, but so are all new parents. Kat told Bret “It’s way too soon to feel tired: you’re going to be tired for the next 20 or so years, and it’s […]
Read More
(Not much goin’ on in Campbellsville, KY. Blogging gets slow this time every year. Perdoneme, por favor.) I’m an old guy. My life is a calm existence oblivious to popular culture. To this day I don’t understand what makes the Kardashians newsworthy, why kids buy and wear torn up jeans, or why anyone watched The […]
Read More
My forebears were – and I remain – Confederate sympathizers. But in recent years I’ve come to realize that the world has become a better place courtesy of the Union’s victory. And although I remain stunned by the courage of the men in gray, I have come to equally respect the spine of the Bluecoats. […]
Read More
Years ago we spent a lovely weekend in the Doubleday Inn, named for a Union general present here who also is credited as the inventor of baseball. At the Inn we enjoyed a wine and cheese gathering with a Gettysburg historian and learned much, courtesy of the Inn. The next day we did the battlefield’s […]
Read More
We have seen The Grand Canyon, the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, and now the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania. That last one is known as Pine Creek Gorge to all but those who market Penn tourism. Penn’s Grand is not too far from the Tioga-Hammond Lakes CoE campground where we spent several days in mid-August. There […]
Read More
Kat and I are enjoying a mild Pennsylvania summer. For most of the past two weeks we have camped at Penn Wood Airstream Campground near Clarion. It’s a quiet, lovely setting amid a meadow with a clear creek running alongside. They have full hookups, good wifi, showers and a laundry that’s only one greenback (no […]
Read More
Kat is a waterfall aficionado (still working on my Spanish for Costa Rica) and there are some fine ones in and near Watkins Glen State Park. We pulled our campsite to Romulus, NY and Sampson State Park on the banks of Seneca, deepest of the Finger Lakes. From there it is but a 45 minute […]
Read More
Lyons, NY is about 60 miles north of Ithaca, and since we were that close I really wanted to see the town. My old buddy and former employer Bob has returned to his hometown to do what his father and grandfather did: operate The Ohmann Theatre. Kat and I had planned to catch a film […]
Read More
After Reach Knolls Campground we moved northwest to Newport, ME and Sebasticook Lake. It offers water, electricity, and a dump station with sites near the banks of a huge freshwater lake. It is not a good campground, but they offer ice cream cones in bowls surrounded by side ice cream for $1.75. They didn’t have […]
Read More
Last week we completed two happy weeks of Oceanfront Camping at Reach Knolls just outside Brooklin, Maine. Al & Pat of TwoBikes fame read its highly favorable Campendium reviews and passed the tip on to us. And this title: It’s the double-truth, Ruth. It has everything you need — 30 amps, clean hose water on […]
Read More
Kat and I visited Acadia National Park in September, 1996. We were struck by the harsh beauty of water crashing upon rock, mountains capped by the green of thick forests, and we enjoyed many an overlook. The Park now offers a free shuttle service on account of vehicular overcrowding. You don’t see much from a […]
Read MoreOur last post promised word on the outcome of Lori’s semi-frightening recipe for steamed lobsters. We followed her instructions in spirit and almost to the letter. Live lobstahs go for $6.75 a pound here, which gave us the courage to try cooking them The Mainer Way, which goes like this. “Walk down to the beach […]
Read More
Kat and I came to Maine to be cool in July, and so far, so good. Days rarely hit 80, and nights routinely find the mid 50’s. There are firs, beeches, and wild flowers everywhere. Oh, the seafood is so good … it shall have its own post. Suffice it to say, I think the […]
Read More
We found two excellent Corps of Engineers campgrounds in northern PA, each site with power and water, and some at both with full hook-ups. Prices are a reasonable $17 to $18 if you have America the Beautiful; but twice that if you don’t. Tionesta Lakes is located just outside the northwest PA town of […]
Read More
(This blog has been published out of order: late by about ten days. We have had poor internet service, and despite my advancing years, I can still lose a data file as well as I ever did on somebody’s payroll. The pictures mostly did not come out because I took them.) Old Shenandoah’s Big Meadows […]
Read More
I first came to Oil City, PA as a new employee of a Fortune 1000 company headquartered there. You may remember Quaker State; it had a NASCAR entry that tended to trail billowing black smoke while coasting to a race-ending stop somewhere on the infield, and its final ads featured that snarling red-headed guy with […]
Read More
On our way north we passed through another of our old corporate home towns, and there interred Pink’s ashes next to the graves of Samantha and Nike, our earlier great Springer Spaniels. We have listed our home and dropped in to see how its cleanup and repair work is going. I thought the place looked […]
Read More
Life on the Blue Highways 