It is past time to include the black ones. Kat and I are still healthy, and still fearful. Our campground has become a small town with perhaps 25% vacant sites on weekdays and at most 10% on weekends. Many of the semi-permanent campers are from hotspots Florida or Texas, and most of the weekenders work […]
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Two weeks ago we left a perfectly good campground in Carlos, Texas. Why? A central Texas summer is not something many people enjoy. And things had become a bit dicey for full-time RVers. The Corps of Engineers and BLM had just closed all their campgrounds and boondocking areas. Many state parks had closings scheduled, “until […]
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As a rule Texans fear few things. They respect funnel clouds and shotguns, and dread losing a football game to LSU or having a Democrat in the White House. But the novel coronavirus has them sitting up, paying attention, and doing a lot of hand-washing, if not -wringing. Yet as of March 7, 2020 the […]
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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 […]
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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 MoreSome parks advise their visitors to bring lots of insect repellent. Others warn you about extreme winter or summer weather. Hatteras Seashore does none of that, but what the hey, we used to be Tarheels. We know that country. You don’t need to tell us nothin’.
Read MoreThen she saw a wildcat, a couple of bighorn sheep, a buffalo, and a family of white-tailed deer. All were of that peculiar sub-species, Goodyearicus.
Read MoreThe Army made me an infantryman, and motivated me to the point I was slavering to kill old Victor Charles and use his blood as war paint. That motivation evaporated once I got there and noticed that so many of us were going to replace KIAs, or worse.
Read MoreWe both pull our rig pretty well now, but it was not always so. Kat has become an accomplished trailer backer and I have learned how to communicate in ways that will not lead to shoulder bursitis. I can usually eyeball a site and know where and how many levelers to use under the wheels. We’ve mastered use of our generator to preserve battery life while reloading our laptops and phones. Water management has been mastered, and neither of us has crushed a wheel chock in almost two years!
Read MoreAirstreamers are a strange tribe. We have an online forum where all things Airstream are hashed out, and occasionally settled. Many of us take perverse pride in how badly we are gouged on repairs and maintenance by RV shops, dealers, and especially Jackson Center ….
Read MoreWe were frequent tent campers when our kids were little. Our rule was: forget about the weather; if you go, you stay. We had a day just like this in Colorado back in ’91. We ventured outside only to cook, spending most of the day inside our old Suburban. I prepared scrambled eggs, canned corned beef hash, and skillet toast on a two-burner Coleman stove wearing a poncho to keep out the light but steady rain.
Read More… she watched me load the dryer the same rapt way that Pink watches me eat. I selected the next to highest temperature, but she objected “Everybody uses hot. It’s faster.” “But I’ve found elastic lasts longer on a lower heat setting.” “May-be.”
Read MoreKat wanted to hike some trails so we set out to climb the Cliff Shelf Trail, rated Moderate by the Badlands NPS. Once I was an athlete (Kat still is), but age and injuries have worn out some of my key mobility joints. Moderate sounded Aggressive to me, but we set out to do it. […]
Read MoreSage Creek campground is only about 20 miles from one of our Must-Sees in South Dakota, Wall Drug. We figured to keep the truck and trailer hitched up, visit the little town with the big store, and maybe boondock Tuesday night somewhere on the Buffalo Gap National Grassland. Spring days are longer up north and […]
Read MoreMonday we figured it was time to go a step further in boondocking. We set out for the Sage Creek primitive campground. Primitive typically means there’s a road to it and nothing more. This was kind of true; the road was dirt and gravel, washboard with occasional patches of smooth. Otherwise it was pure primitive, […]
Read MoreSaturday we visited Niobrara National Wildlife Reserve. We were a quarter mile into the park when up there on the ridgeline loomed the silhouette of a buffalo bull: a big boy, for sure. Moments later we saw the whole herd behind him, maybe 100 of them. These bison are more tame than wild so they […]
Read MoreWe are South Dakotans. We got our drivers licenses in Vermillion, despite the best efforts of some circuit-riding DMV vets from Sioux City. They did their best impression of French government functionaries (Ah, thees receipt for your camping does not leest your Dakota address!” “Uh, I paid $5 cash; he had no reason to ask […]
Read MoreAround noon on May 7 the sun came out and we crossed the Big Sioux River leaving Iowa and entering South Dakota. Half an hour later we rolled into Vermillion, SD, home of both the U of South Dakota Coyotes and of the multiple state championship winning Vermillion High School Tanagers. How ‘bout that Tanager […]
Read MoreOn the way to Nebraska City we stopped at a Target to buy a Fuji S4850 camera. It’s more camera than a Point and Shoot but easier to use than a full DSLR. Like everything else, you should read the instructions before trying to do anything useful, hence the delay in this post. And then […]
Read MoreOn May 2 and 3 the weather broke records all over Kansas, including Lawrence. The new temperature record is 43 degrees, both days, and that’s not a Low, it’s a High. The old record predates me, going back to May 2 & 3, 1944. The old recorded lowest High for these days had been 44 […]
Read MoreAs you may or may not know, I sure love thunderstorms and neon signs….
Read More… known on big rigs as a Jake brake, this is a nice feature to have in mountains. It takes taking some of the load off your truck and trailer brakes. Jacobs brakes ™ restrict the outflow of exhaust gases, slowing the engine’s rpms,…
Read MoreTomorrow we will saddle up and move to Tenkiller Ferry Lake in Oklahoma. It’s a Corps of Engineers park, and we hope to prolong spring in our northbound wandering. I’ll miss Cossatot Reefs. Its forest of blooming dogwoods, all those just beginning to leaf hardwoods, and this beautiful noisy river make this by far the […]
Read MoreWednesday we scouted Gillham Lake’s other campsites, Little Coon Creek and Big Coon Creek. Big CC is on Gillham Lake. Little CC is in a wooded area without water frontage. Our campsite is better for us. All over the park the perfection of the redbud and dogwood blossoms says we have purchased another two weeks […]
Read MoreWe pulled out of Chicot State Park Sunday morning en route to Shreveport, old friends, and what’s left of my family. Today’s trip began with blue highways 1173, 106, 115 and ended on red I-49. Sometimes a smooth road’s lack of scenery is a fair price to pay for an easy ride. There was an […]
Read MoreYou know a bar’s gotta be good if it’s only open half of one day a week, right? Ville Platte radio station KVPI 1050 AM broadcasts a live Cajun music show from Fred’s Lounge every Saturday morning from 9:00 to 11:00. The lounge opens an hour before the show….
Read MoreFountainbleau State Park in Mandeville, Louisiana, off blue highway LA 22, is a fine place for birding. The lake has too many gulls to identify, lots of those wonderfully clumsy fishermen we call the brown pelican, all kinds of ducks, and assorted wading birds. On land you’ll see spectacular red-headed woodpeckers, nearly fluorescent bluebirds, mockingbirds, […]
Read MoreThe name is Jackson. And you best know: I’m a killer. We have been in our 28’ Airstream for seven weeks now. Before, we had always lived in apartments or houses. In stick and brick dwellings roaches were the more likely pest than mice. I haven’t had to poison or trap a mouse in twenty […]
Read MoreIt’s not easy to find simple food that is easy to cook, inexpensive, and tasty. But it’s out there. We discovered this simple egg dish on a cold rainy day last week. The Kat likes it so much she would eat it every other day. But for me, once a week is enough. Epicurious published […]
Read MoreFor the past five days Kat, Jackson, and Pink have camped at Bogue Chitto, a south Lousiana state park off blue highway LA 25. It’s ten miles north of Folsom (not the one with a famous prison) and six miles south of Franklinton. Bogue sounds like Bogart’s nickname, and Chitto rhymes with “ditto”, not “Cheeto”. […]
Read MorePink is special. Not athletic like most Springers, but more empathetic than any others I’ve known. She likes kittens and has tried to adopt them. Not a perfect soul, she has prejudices: Muscovy ducks and shelled creatures, especially tortoises and armadillos. She’s forever hungry, perhaps from her time of near starvation. To a dog, food is currency.
Read MoreThere were albums full of pictures of Norm, his buds, and some of the kids he had coached. Everybody loved this guy. I wish we had met him. He went out doing what he loved to do, living the RV life and enjoying the great outdoors
Read MoreBreaking news: William Least Heat-Moon just gave us his blessing to use his best-seller’s title in our blog’s name. That is a big deal. Imagine the literary pretentions one must have to name a blog on full-time RV life after Heat-Moon’s travelogue of self-discovery, a book which is required reading in many college English courses. […]
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Life on the Blue Highways 