Happenings
Travels and Thoughts
Our Bat Boondoggle
Our Bat Boondoggle A million-and-a-half bats in a feeding frenzy? I couldn’t pass on the promise of such a sight. Before we arrived in Austin, Texas, I’d read that Mexican Free-tailed bats made nests under the bridge on South Congress Avenue. They’d arrive annually in...
Reluctant No More
RV Reluctance has been my schtick for over five years. So how did it happen that I’m now living full time in a motorhome? Flash back to 2015: “I think we should buy an RV and travel the country,” my excited husband said. “You want me to leave my garden, my orchids,...
Woodstock, At Last
Missing Woodstock, that quintessential rock festival in the Catskills back in 1969, still leaves a hole in my soul. I should have been there. I’d been a student then at Florida State University in Tallahassee, partying hard but somehow managing to stay on track for...
A Tick Bite
I don’t do well with stinging, biting insects. I react both emotionally and physiologically, and it’s not pretty. In our RV travels, we’ve encountered pesky bugs almost every place we’ve been. My husband Michael takes them in stride. But then, bugs rarely bite or...
World’s Largest RV Show
I’m thinking the RV Show at the Florida State Fairgrounds last January lived up to its advertising hype of being the largest RV show in the world. Vendors filled three huge halls with exhibits. Outside the exhibition halls, organizers had compressed thousands of RVs...
A Rogue Wave
We forced ourselves to walk along the beach in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. It felt compulsory since our RV park was just across Ocean Boulevard, with only sand dunes separating the road from the Atlantic Ocean. We were not beach people. Just to be able to say I’d done...
Letting Go
“I know about yanking up roots,” I muttered under my breath, “but this is not how I wanted to do it.” “What’d you say?” My husband looked up from the newspaper, suddenly interested. I stood at the table’s end on the lanai, looking out at my orchid collection. I had...
My Helpful Husband
After two years of RV travel, I finally agreed to Michael’s broken-record pleas that we sell the house and go fulltime on the road in our RV. Now I faced the undeniable need to reduce our possessions by at least half. It was time to purge. Packing up all this stuff...
An RV Armistice
Despite trappings to the contrary, not everything about RVing is peace and love. This story is an example of RV disharmony. Yes, it can happen. Who would have thought a GPS navigational system could bring two reasonably intelligent, even-tempered old coots to a...
Chapter 1 Opening…
You Want to Buy WHAT? “Damn it, Michael. I’m not doing it. I won’t be one of those old coots tooling around the country in a pretentious RV. That is so not me.” Driving around the country in a hot, bouncy tin-can house is not something I’d ever considered doing....
Christmas Eve on the Levee
If you ever want to grab a bite to eat on Christmas Eve, go to Bulldogs Corner in Paulina, Louisiana. A couple of years ago my husband and I made the forty-mile trip north along the Mississippi River from New Orleans into the heart of Cajun country. We wanted to see...
Turning Stones
I once heard a story of an elderly nun who traveled the country in an old bus with Sisters from her Order. Every time the bus stopped, the old woman jumped out and scurried to find a rock, which she would either turn over or move a couple of inches. When asked about...
Cadillac Ranch
“Wait ‘til we get to Cadillac Ranch,” Michael said. “You’ll think you’re hallucinating.” Our RV bounced along a narrow backroad in the Texas Panhandle near Amarillo. We were trying to follow the famed Route 66 Highway. My husband was right. Cadillac Ranch was surreal,...