Florence and Bossa Nova

It’s been hard to watch the devastation created by Hurricane Florence since Friday. Although she’s left North Carolina as a tropical storm, the flooding from rivers and streams will not reach its peak for a couple of days. I spoke with my brother Mark before landfall to see if he was ready for the storm. He […]

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

We’ve been off the road for ten days, but I wanted to talk about our two-day stay in Medora, North Dakota. We stopped there on the way to Minnesota, to explore the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. A couple of miles south of I-94 in Western North Dakota, it’s a fun little town. We stayed at the […]

Grand Tetons and Jackson

The drive from Yellowstone to The Grand Tetons National Park was short and beautiful. After days surrounded by geysers and hot springs, moonscapes and forests, the mountains took center stage, majestic and awe-inspiring. We turned into Colter Bay Village where we would camp for the next seven days and drove down to Jackson Lake. Directly across the […]

Yellowstone

We came through Wyoming on I-90 after leaving Devils Tower, and just before Buffalo, the Bighorn Mountain’s misty peaks appeared in the west. How in the world could we get Bossa Nova over those mountains? Relieved as the highway turned north, I thought, “maybe we won’t need to cross them after all”. But turning west on […]

Devils Tower and Sundance

Devils Tower is awesome. Spielberg made it famous in his movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. Standing beneath it with the Wyoming sky behind it will take your breath away. It comes into view miles away, a silent sentinel overlooking the pine-covered Black Hills Forest. As you draw closer, the outline becomes an immense, etched […]

Campers or Travelers?

It hit me this week – Marie and I may not be “campers”. We spend five or six months each year in Bossa Nova, but don’t hang out at the campgrounds. We eat the majority of our meals at BN’s dinette table or out with family and friends rather than at picnic tables and instead […]

Madison County, Iowa

Marie and I recently spent three nights in Adel, Iowa, while visiting the Lenockers on their farm in Dexter, about 30 miles west of Des Moines. They work about 2,000 acres of corn, soy and pasture in addition to raising a few head of cattle (70 to 100). One hundred and fifty years ago, Godfrey […]

Mackinac Island & St. Ignace

Water and beaches. Growing up half a mile from Skaket Beach on Cape Cod Bay and four miles from Nauset Beach on the Atlantic Ocean, water and beaches are in my blood. Sunny and calm, or slate-grey and angry, bodies of water that reach for the horizon, touch my soul. When I first saw the Great […]

Michigan – Addison Oaks Park

A couple of years ago, wanting to winter in Florida and see our families each summer, we became “reverse snowbirds”. Since last year we’ve logged over 12,000 miles and camped in seventeen States. Over the last six weeks, we’ve visited most of the Philbrick clan in North Carolina and Cape Cod and are now in […]

Hamilton, Ontario: Fifty Points

The drive from Cooperstown to Hamilton, Ontario was breezy and wet. With morning rain in Wednesday morning’s forecast, I hooked up the Sonic on Tuesday night to avoid being soaked. Except for the wind and rain, the trip was uneventful. We spent some time on Rte. 20, a beautiful, winding road through the hills of […]