Category Archives: USA

Climb High, Sleep Low

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I have had altitude sickness twice in my life – once on my attempt to summit Kilimanjaro, and again in Nam Tso Lake in Tibet.   I liken it to sea sickness, in that I would do just about anything to make it stop. As best I can describe, it feels like your brain is suddenly two sizes larger than your skull, and my gray matter might begin protruding from the eyeballs at any given moment.  Each move must be made in slo-mo, otherwise everything pounds and pulsates with every step.  Call me paranoid, but it is not an experience I wish to repeat.   So when Box Canyon Mark says Continue reading →

Must There Be Pain?

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The scenery around Lovely Ouray is the type of stuff from which those hokey corporate motivational posters are made.   You know, the ones that they hang in the break room that show some fit mountain climber scaling a mountain that no corporate job would permit enough time off to drive by, let alone climb?   The kind of propaganda posters that try to reinforce that “Without pain, there is no gain?”   I have always preferred to think Continue reading →

Outskirting Ouray

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I have been following the Box Canyon Blog since before I even had an RV. I figure I have read through about a hundred posts touting and tempting life in a box canyon affectionately referred to as “Lovely Ouray, the Switzerland of America.”  So I knew before I got here it would be a special place.  Give me a box canyon, and I am happy. Give me one filled with hikes, a brewery, a hot springs, and a chocolate shop selling “Scrap Cookies” made from left over chocolates? Well, about the only thing you could add to top that would be to throw a couple of good friends into the mix! Life’s own version of the Scrap Cookie.  😉 Continue reading →

Up on A Tightrope

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The great  Karl Wallenda, tight rope walker extraordinaire of The Flying Wallendas once said “Walking the wire is living, everything else is waiting.”   I feel that same way about being on the road.  It is living.  Everything else is waiting…

My family senses this stirring in me.  My Mom has thankfully always been one to “push her chicks out of the nest.”   So finally, after 75 days of being parked down on the farm, she says “I don’t want you waiting around here for Dad and me to croak.  It’s time for you to get back to living your life.  We’ll be okay here.”   I saw a crack in the window, and I flew through it. Continue reading →

Flight of the Honey Bee

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For several years, my parents have had a hive of bees living in between the walls of their storage shed, painted to look like a red barn, therefore appropriately referred to as “The Red Shed.” No one knows how they got there, but Mom remembers seeing a swarm arrive one day, so thick it darkened the sky. Shortly thereafter, they started noticing increasing numbers of bees inside and around the shed. Continue reading →

Workamping

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Since having retired last October, I have on more than one occasion been chided for being on “perpetual vacation.” To that, I say, “What the heck’s wrong with a perpetual vacation??” After all, I worked long and hard to earn “time off for good behavior.” So why give it up so soon? Maybe I will get to that point eventually, but for now, I still enjoy “vacation mode.” Continue reading →

House of Pain

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It’s been over two months since my last blog post.  One might think by now that I would be out of the habit of keeping the blog.  And most days, they would be right.  I often think I won’t update the blog again.  It’s a waste of time.  As Willie would sing, “You cain’t make a record if you ain’t got nuthin’ to say.”  But if I am truthful with myself, I miss writing so much it hurts. Like so many things in my life, there doesn’t seem to be a middle ground.  I have always preferred it that way.  Anything but lukewarm mediocrity.   So the mood swings from “Never again!” to “How could I possibly not? Continue reading →

Defining Moments

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Defining moments…that split second in our lives when our path pivots, and we slowly begin to process that our lives have just changed forever…

I realize it seems ironic for someone with a public blog to say they are a “private person,” but I don’t typically share deeply personal matters here.  However, after corresponding via this blog over the past couple of years, my followers have also become my friends.  You are my community…my “tribe.”

So it is with deep heart wrenching sadness that I must tell you that my baby brother Stephen died suddenly this week.  He was only 53 years young.  He leaves behind a loving wife and two beautiful daughters, my only nieces. Continue reading →

San Diego Scenes, Pt 5 of 5 — “The Beach, The Burgers…and the Beer!”

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I have long said that San Diego has “absence of weather.” It is so damned near perfect here that I can’t even feel the air on my skin most times. When my friend Margie relocated from Manhattan to San Diego, I got annoyed with her always posting daily updates on Facebook to remind us all that the weather was “Sunny, 78 degrees, winds light and variable.” Continue reading →