Category: Travels

Walking through the Norris Geyser at Yellowstone National Park, found selfie-snappers more interesting than bubbling springs. Instead of geysers, I snapped selfie snappers. Here’s my favorite- ‘millenial with tiny bear’. Didn’t want to look like a creep or stalker (using my big, loud Nikon), so no time for proper focus. What are they thinking?  More…

Never expected this.  Camping tonight, accidentally, at a campground especially for ‘sand’ jockeys. This was a surprising introduction to an American sub-culture I had no idea existed.  Some of these dune buggies cost $35,000+ (but used ones- probably for sale after their previous owner broke his back– can be had for just a couple thousand)….

Stumbled on this scene outside Batesville, in northern Mississippi. Batesville, you probably already know is the namesake and home of the Batesville Casket Company, America’s largest coffin producer– for more than 100 years!  I’ve seen their delivery trucks across the USA.   Sadly, they don’t offer factory tours– I asked. This inspiring piece of sculpture…

Homemade donut shops are a big thing in the rural West. If a deteriorating town along the back roads has any business, it’s probably a donut shop. And not a squeaky clean and bright national chain like Krispy Kreme or Dunkin’ Donuts, but usually in an abandoned laundromat or ex-burger joint. I’d been driving past…

Childress, Texas again. I pulled into Walmart, for extra-strength bug scrub. Walmart was the whole ball game for Childress, judging from all the sad and empty storefronts on Main Street—the is the brave new world of America. My normal windshield washer fluid barely got me through the buggy tropics of Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana….

This is a typical view from a ‘primitive’ campground on Salmon Creek Lake, just outside the tiny, mostly abandoned crossroads town of Rogerson, Southern Idaho, a very lonely place. Primitive campgrounds are very spare– sometimes not even a level parking pad, usually a common water spigot and pit toilet.  It never has electric.  For these…

Nights on the road: 1 Tues 5/23 Davidson, NC- Lebannon, TN Cedars of Lebanon SP 2 Wed 5/24 Mussel Shoals, AL Belden, MS Deer Run Eagle Ridge Trace State Park 3 Thu 5/25 Clarksdale, MS Natchez, MS NATCHEZ State Park 4 Fri5/26 L’Acadie Inn &RV Park  Eunice, LA 5 Sat 5/27 Eunice, LA L’Acadie Inn…

  Drove today from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the Pine Ridge Lakota Sioux Reservation, via the Bandlands Nat. Park. My van parked for the evening in a field behind a Lakota-owned restaurant and motel in the middle of the reservation. Prairie thunderstorm raging outside. I’m on high ground, but a ranger today…