Roadside Nonsense: Dinosaur World
Category: Roadside NonsenseAmerica has more ridiculous roadside attractions than almost anywhere— and somehow, in my time on the road, I’ve now been to TWO of the three Dinosaur World locations. (I am...
Dive of the Week: Yellow City Street Food
Category: Dive of the WeekAmarillo, Texas, exists on a long stretch of nothing— which makes it feel like an oasis when approaching. If I need to eat food in the hours before reaching...
Hogtied: The Fort Worth Rodeo
Category: DestinationsDallas might get all the headlines due to being the shiny, modern capital city of Texas-- but if you ask me, Fort Worth is where it's at. It's the...
Roadside Nonsense: The Toilet Seat Museum
Category: Roadside NonsenseThe first thing that hits you about The Toilet Seat Museum is the scale.
The second thing that hits you is that ONE man-- Barney Smith-- made ALL of...
In the Weeds: Weird Texas Museums
Category: Destinations, Roadside NonsenseTexas is in the dead center of the South, and that means if you live on wheels, you are going to have to drive through it. Especially if you...
Roadside Nonsense: the Best Darn Gun Shop
Category: Roadside NonsenseHow can you say you're in Texas without saying you're in Texas?
That's right. If you're at "The Best Darn Gun Shop in the World!" (exclamation point, to boot)....
Roadside Nonsense: Love’s Love
Category: Roadside NonsenseThey say ‘there’s no place like home.’
When you’re living on the road, there’s no place like Love’s. It sounds cheesy, but Love’s has become a basecamp for me in...
Cities: Salt Lake City– Pride & the LDS Church
Category: CitiesI'd only been to the Pride festivals in the past in major, progressive-leaning cities. Which, in retrospect, seemed like an oversight-- and one I could easily remedy being in the...
Iron and Fire: Monument Valley
Category: DestinationsMonument Valley is first and foremost a sacred place for the Navajo people-- its Navajo name is: Tsé Biiʼ Ndzisgaii, meaning "Valley of the Rocks." It is also a...
Rooms with a View: Mesa Verde National Park
Category: DestinationsMesa Verde had been on my bucket list for a long time.
The most complete archeological preserve in the United States, with over 4,500 active digging sites, Mesa Verde...
King of Caves: Carlsbad Caverns
Category: DestinationsCarlsbad, New Mexico is at the crossroads of Texas and New Mexico-- and feels like it-- so isolated, oil trucks were the most frequent vehicle one passed on the...
Hamlet of the Week: Marfa, TX
Category: Hamlet of the WeekMarfa is one of the only places in America in which there is still an unsolved mystery-- a natural phenomenon that has been occurring for 100 years that nobody...
The Texas Gulf Coast: Corpus Christi
Category: DestinationsLooking back at my photo roll, all of my pictures in Corpus Christi are of the beach.
All of them.
So, I apologize-- as I cannot give you a...
Hamlet of the Week: Matagorda, TX
Category: Hamlet of the WeekI'm guessing you have never heard of Matagorda, Texas?
Neither had I. At population of a mere 313 by the last Census, I know this hidden gem would have...
Rural Slavery: The Whitney Plantation
Category: DestinationsIf you have read this blog for any length of time, you know I have a firm 'No Visiting Plantations' rule.
In my year out on the road, I...
Scene Around: Pourout
Category: Scene AroundOn an ancient cemetery wall, why not place an empty bottle of booze for the enjoyment of the...
Cities: NOLA, New Orleans
Category: CitiesThere are so many places in America that feel exactly like other places in America.
Sometimes, when in the outer suburban reaches of various cities, I feel my sense of...
Cities: Mobile, AL
Category: CitiesWhen a friend tells you they need to go to Mobile, Alabama to pick up a large volume of kitchen things from their family that can’t be shipped (without...
So Grande: Big Bend National Park
Category: DestinationsWhen approaching Big Bend National Park, I felt like I was approaching the end of the earth itself. The signs of civilization long in my rearview, the open expanse...
Roadside Nonsense: Roswell
Category: Roadside NonsenseRoswell is one of "those" places that is a perfect stopover on a roadtrip.
It's a place that makes little sense to visit as a standalone destination-- just a...
Roadside Nonsense: National Museum of Nuclear Science & History
Category: Roadside NonsenseI had no idea what to expect when heading for the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History outside Albuquerque.
And when leaving it, I still wasn't...
Cities: Albuquerque, NM
Category: CitiesIn nearly a year of travel, I find I keep coming back and back to Albuquerque.
It seems like I've been there in every season at this point....
Roadside Nonsense: Burlesque Hall of Fame
Category: Roadside NonsenseA longtime fan of burlesque shows (my friends and I had been going for decades), I couldn't resist the temptation (HEY-OH!) to go to the Burlesque Hall of Fame...
Cities: Viva Las Vegas
Category: CitiesLas Vegas: city of spectacle and misery. Usually more the latter than the former.
I'll start out by saying: I am not a fan of Vegas generally. I was...
Trifecta: Meow Wolf Santa Fe, Denver, and Vegas
Category: DestinationsIn my opinion, Disney doesn't have anything on Meow Wolf.
Because to me, Meow Wolf is Disney for adults (and sure, there are kids at these things). But the...
Scene Around: First Javelina Sighting
Category: Scene AroundThe first time I saw a Javelina, it was after dark. I was driving, and braked hard when something ran across the road.
Emphasis on the SOMETHING-- I couldn't...
Cities: Santa Fe, NM
Category: CitiesOne of the real blessings of the van is being able to 'drop in' on friends. Adult friendships-- particularly the difficulty of seeing one another as frequently as we'd...
Dive of the Week: Tesuque Market
Category: Dive of the WeekJust outside Santa Fe is Tesuque Village, a small community that contains under 1,000 people and is the native home of the Tewa and Tesuque Pueblo people. The area...
Hot Stuff: Organ Pipe National Monument
Category: DestinationsOrgan Pipe National Monument is the only place in the United States where the Senita cactus (the organ pipe cactus) grows, because it is directly on the border with...
Roadside Nonsense: Spring Training
Category: Roadside NonsenseFunny what you run into when driving in the Sonoran desert.
Goodyear, Arizona, is not a town I'd heard of prior to rolling through it on a spring day....
Cities: Tucson, AZ
Category: CitiesI can't say enough good things about Tucson.
Having spent time in Phoenix, Scottsdale, and other Arizona cities this year-- there's just no place in the state as good...
Mac’s View: Remote Control Madness!
Category: Mac's ViewHey, it's me, Mac.
I wanted to tell you about one of my VERY BEST DAYS EVER.
Well, it all started at the dog park, which is already one...
Roadside Nonsense: Lisa Frank Headquarters
Category: Roadside NonsenseDid you know that Lisa Frank's vast 90s empire was run from a corporate office based in Tucson? Well, me neither-- until I read an insane article from Jezebel,...
Cities: Sedona, AZ
Category: CitiesSedona is a geographic accident that offers the most striking AND lowest-effort nature selfies.
Which means it mostly draws Instagram-mers in vibrant dresses (selected to offset the red of...
Big House: Casa Grande Ruins National Monument
Category: DestinationsIt was a rainy spring day when I stopped at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument.
The entirety of the monument was one large structure-- but that was all that...
Hamlet of the Week: Arcosanti, AZ
Category: Hamlet of the WeekWhat is Arcosanti? It's an experimental architectural community sandwiched between Phoenix and Sedona, found down a long, uneven dirt road on top of a wide mesa.
I'd never heard...
Roadside Nonsense: Meteor Crater
Category: Roadside NonsenseThere is a privately-owned meteor crater in the middle of the desert in Arizona.
On the way to Flagstaff, on a staggeringly windswept stretch of arid desert, lies an...
Cave In: Bandelier National Monument
Category: DestinationsBandelier National Monument is one of the bunch of consistently-underated (and probably under-visited) National Monuments out there. Like so many others, it wasn't on our radar, but driving around...
Roadside Nonsense: Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Farm
Category: Roadside NonsenseBeing a "Sign Reader" is really annoying for your passenger, but sometimes it has its benefits. When traveling on the highway 10 between Phoenix and Tucson-- I read a...
World Famous: Chaco Culture National Historic Park
Category: DestinationsWhen eating a veggie burger in Amarillo, Texas, we got to talking to another home-on-wheels couple who were traveling nurses.
And we learned that day to ALWAYS listen to...
Mac’s View: Best Petsitter Ever!
Category: Mac's ViewHey, it's me, Mac.
I wanted you to know that if you ever need a pet sitter, I'm like the #1 Guy you should call.
Here's me and my...
Hamlet of the Week: Taos, NM
Category: Hamlet of the WeekWe came to Taos to pet-sit, and thus spent most of our time with the animals we were caring for-- so we didn't get to see much of Taos--...
This Old House: Gila Cliff Dwellings
Category: DestinationsCliff dwellings are deceptively-simple: people took residence in naturally hollowed-out caves. End of story, right?
But some things you don't consider initially think about when viewing these cave homes is...
Hoodoo Voodoo: Chiricahua National Monument
Category: DestinationsNational Parks are so famed, they tend to overshadow National Monuments-- but I'm learning that National Monuments often contain similar amounts of grandeur-- and even very similar rock formations....
For the Birds: Elfrida & Whitewater Draw
Category: DestinationsAsking people I have met along the way for recommendations has been revealing in my time on the road.
At the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous, someone we met studied bird...
Dive of the Week: Kountry Kafe
Category: Dive of the WeekElfrida had only one restaurant-- the Kountry Kafe.
This was a town that had a Dollar General, and that was it. I'm not being hyperbolic-- there were no stoplights,...
Hamlet of the Week: Bisbee, AZ
Category: Hamlet of the WeekWe ran into lots of cool people around Arizona that recommended we visit the town of Bisbee, (I had even heard a tip from some friends in the Northwest...
Gorge: Rio Grande del Norte National Monument
Category: DestinationsThe beauty of being on the road constantly is the ability to go places you'd never heard of until a day prior.
We rolled into Taos, New Mexico to...
Roadside Nonsense: Tombstone and the OK Corral
Category: Roadside NonsenseNeither of us had ever seen the movie "Tombstone."
But why not take the chance to see grown men re-enacting a gun battle in which some town drunks were killed...
Person of Interest: These Folks
Category: Person of InterestNow, generally when you meet someone outside a truck stop, it's not a great interaction.
But this was Quartzite. Everyone and their brother goes to truck stops there-- so...
Dive of the Week: Silly Al’s Pizza
Category: Dive of the WeekYou heard that right-- one of the few restaurants in Quartzite was Silly Al's Pizza, which was a restaurant covered in wooden paneling, a menu that probably hadn't changed...
Heck on Wheels: Quartzite and the RTR
Category: DestinationsI have seen a lot of places in my life, but until this January-- I never seen a town built up entirely of and around people on wheels.
Quartzite,...
Cities: Yuma, AZ
Category: CitiesAccording to the Guininess Book of World Records, Yuma, Arizona is the "Sunniest City on Earth."
It is estimated that 91% of their year is sunny and warm-- which also...
Roadside Nonsense: The Center of the World
Category: Roadside NonsenseTraveling east from Southern California to Arizona, you will pass "The Center of the World."
There's no mistaking it-- a massive black triangle sign beckons from the highway, and begs...
Parched: Death Valley National Park
Category: DestinationsI didn't expect much.
I figured Death Valley would be a desolate plane of nothingness, given that it's the lowest point in the continent, clocking in at 200-some feet...
Trees, Please: Joshua Tree National Park
Category: DestinationsAs National Parks go, Joshua Tree couldn't be "hotter"-- literally and figuratively.
Joshua Tree is a popular National Park, with attendance booming in the past 10 years, partly because...
Dive of the Week: Chef Tanya’s Kitchen
Category: Dive of the WeekTucked into an industrial district of Palm Springs is a total gem for both vegetarians and vegans: Chef Tanya's Kitchen.
The store section was a complete stash of every high-quality...
Cities: Palm Springs, CA (2 of 2)
Category: CitiesMac, Moon, and I loved spending time with friends in Palm Springs. Mac had no less than 5 dogs in and out of the house over the weeks to...
Cities: Palm Springs, CA (1 of 2)
Category: CitiesHaving lived in the Northwest for years, through rain and bleak days of unrelenting clouds from November to May-- both Moon and I really learned the value of sunshine...