Sixty is the New…Retired???

As if I don’t have enough going on during the current convergence…dealing with the my little Tracker, the “automotive heart transplant candidate,”  I have also been helping move my 86 year old Mom and 93 year old Dad back down to the farm.  Turns out, they aren’t city folk after all…

Throw in one more simultaneous life-change, and you have the makings of what I have been calling “The Perfect Storm,” as all these things converge during the same week.  Coincidentally, sixty days ago, I could not have known about the first two “storm elements” when I announced my intent to retire Continue reading

Together…Again

There have been a few tense moments here at the Highland Village Hospital.   I have tried to stay occupied outside the “waiting room” by doing a few menial tasks of my own, like changing a couple of burned out blubs in the Winnie, changing out the air filter and cabin filter, and cleaning and washing her inside and out…..just short of pacing as the two “smiling surgeons” keep assuring me that everything is progressing nicely in the lane next to me. Continue reading

We Have a Donor!

I send “email postcards” to friends and family along the way with jokes about towing “The Hearse” behind me for 1,760 miles.   A steady week of blacktop camping has me wandering the aisles to count dead animal heads in Cabelas, trying to sleep while the Winnie’s walls rumble all night in the Flying J advertising “over 150 Truck parking spaces,” and being woken up at 2:00am in the Walmart parking lot so they could repaint the yellow stripes beneath me.   All while working a full 40 hour week.  It was a memorable week, to say the least. Continue reading

Blowing Hueco…

Never in my brief nomadic life have I experienced wind like I did at Hueco Tanks State Park. Relentless, constant, wearing, psychologically taxing wind, all day and throughout the night. I was in a gorgeous campsite, but there was no sense in trying to sit outside the rig. The first day, I took my Caesar salad out to dine “al fresco,” but my romaine lettuce was taking flight faster than I could eat it. Continue reading

Hi-Ho, Hueco…

It’s off to work I go…

I have just finished up two straight weeks of blissful vacation, where I rambled and roamed to my hearts content.  I visited three National Parks, found ten things to love about Big Bend, climbed the highest mountain in Texas, and discovered pitfalls in the Bat Cave.  I had so much fun on this vacation, yet I spent less money than any vacation ever. Continue reading

And My Number One Favorite Big Bend Adventure…

The convergence of sunrise and moon set over Santa Elena Canyon

Leave it to Lynne to have some fancy app on her phone that tells the exact position the moon will be setting on any given day.  She had done her homework to learn that it would be setting right in the crack of Santa Elena Canyon on the morning after the full moon….as I understand it, a one out of 365 day chance to hit the “sweet spot.”  Continue reading