Tag Archives: nature

The end of it.

Posted on June 23, 2026 | 1 comment

“Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets”- Arthur Miller

After Bullhead, or maybe after San Diego, my trip (and what little planning I’d planned) took on a life of it’s own and changed completely. I was fifteen days into my thirty day trip and I’d originally planned to spend the final fifteen slowly meandering eastward towards home. Instead, the final leg of my trip became one of had-to-go-to’s and needed-to-be’s and this is how it went-

-after getting my 100 some odd mile taste of Route 66 I got onto US40 and stopped for the day in Holbrook AZ. I needed to get the oil changed in my truck and the Holbrook exit promised both a garage and a KOA in Navajo country. The next morning I stopped for coffee at the Mavericks a mile from the KOA and a half mile from US40, and when I tried to pay for my coffee refill, the woman at the register started winking at me and saying that she couldn’t charge me for water. I winked back and thanked her.

-in Albuquerque I found the Apple store in the sprawling horizontal mall that is Uptown and spent an hour or so talking to the Apple Genius about my trip while he got my laptop working again. Back on US40 I made it to Santa Rosa and the Santa Rosa Lake State Park where “primitive” camping was $10 a night and where I opted to pay an additional $10 for a campsite with a grill and picnic table and access to showers and bathrooms. For a few hours I considered staying in Santa Rosa for a couple of days before finding out that the window for my visit with friends in Oklahoma had shrunk to the following day.

-crossing the top part of Texas I was reminded of the saying that “in Texas, you can watch your dog run away for days”. Kansas and parts of Nevada are flat but Texas says- hold my beer, I’ll show you flat. I’d like to go back someday and maybe I will but I needed to get to Oklahoma and my next overnight visit (which was really fun) before my friends had to leave for Oklahoma City and their grandkids.

-next up was Little Rock Arkansas and an overnight with an old family friend and his soon-to-be bride. I got a tour of Little Rock and a catfish dinner at one of those little places that have been doing something for a long time and have perfected it. After that was some bar hopping and then home. It was in Little Rock that I decided to head home. I don’t know why.

-after driving through Memphis and Nashville TN I stayed in the Hampton Inn in Mount Juliet because the campgrounds were full of NASCAR fans and because I needed a shower.

-in Wytheville VA I stayed at another beautiful KOA. KOA’s are kinda pricey compared to other campgrounds, but each of the KOA’s I stayed in on this trip were amazing and, once again, I thought about staying a couple of days. But I was back in Virginia and within the gravitational pull of home.

So, the next day, home I went.

Do I have regrets? Of course. I don’t think you could take a trip like this and not have regrets. Do I wish I’d kept to my original and blown off my friends and father and spent a couple of weeks exploring the Southwest and Texas? Maybe. But then I’d probably have regretted not stopping and visiting with friends and family.

There were, and always will be, places I’d like to have gone to, things I’d like to have seen. But America is a big place and I only had thirty days so I did the best I could.

And liked what I saw.

Santa Rosa Lake State Park

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Bullhead.

Posted on June 19, 2026 | 1 comment

I arrived in Bullhead Arizona at the home of one of my oldest friends in the late afternoon. Along the way, I drove through some of southern California/western Arizona desert and I gotta tell you- Californians/Arizonans take their desert fun seriously.

I had been driving along, mile after miles of empty asphalt, sand, and what appeared to be dead plants, wondering why anyone had bothered to put a road here when I found myself passing through Imperial Sand Dunes, a B.L.M. (Bureau of Land Management) Recreation Area. Suddenly the empty road was dotted with squat cinder block buildings renting dune buggies and dune bikes and selling everything needed to spend several days blasting around on the sand dunes. Pretty cool.

Anyway. Back to Bullhead. Not a whole lot to talk about. I’d arrived on Memorial Day weekend so most everything was closed except for a Smith’s not far from my friend’s place so we were able to stock up on alcohol and ice and just spend a companionable day and a half together. We have that type of relationship where we can talk every few weeks or go for months on end without speaking and just pick up the thread of conversation where we left it. So we sat and talked and had the TV on but didn’t really watch it. At one point we called Miss Carol and it was during our three-way that she told me not to hurry home, that she was binge watching the French Open and didn’t miss me that much yet. I love my wife.

Bullhead was relaxing. Bullhead was also where the rest of my trip completely changed.

Originally, after I left San Diego, I had been planning on going north to Santa Monica and drive Route 66 end-to-end but that changed after I learned that a LOT of the original 66 is now interstate. So then I decided to head south after my visit to Bullhead into Texas and maybe to El Paso where I was born. But then I found out that approximately one hundred miles of the original Route 66 was just east of Kingman so I decided to drive that and then head south into Texas. But THEN my laptop continued giving me problems and after lengthy troubleshooting with Apple it was decided that I needed have my operating system deleted and re-installed at an Apple store.

Turns out there are only two Apple stores near Bullhead. One in Las Vegas, a 2 1/2 hour drive in the wrong direction and one in Albuquerque New Mexico which was in the right direction but was on Interstate 40. There is nothing wrong with 40, it’s just that I’d been trying to stay off of the big interstates and drive the smaller highways which are typically more interesting.

I’d become addicted to my laptop, so Albuquerque and 40 it was. But not until after I got a taste of Route 66.

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Spectacularity 2.

Posted on June 10, 2026 | 1 comment
Pacifica

The next morning, after I packed up and drove back down the 19 mile steep, twisty, guardrail-less road (which wasn’t as scary going down because I was hugging the mountain side instead of the cliff side) I got back onto Route 50, or this being California, should I be calling it THE Route 50 or maybe just simply, THE 50?

Let me just say right here that there are many things that annoy me about California (it is not my favorite state) and one of them is the way Californians have to preface their highways with the word THE. Nowhere else in the states is this done, to my knowledge, so I figure that it’s just one more way that Californians try to segregate themselves and their state from the rest of us.

So anyway. I had about 150 miles left on Route 50 (or THE Route 50)(or THE 50) until the coast and the Pacific Highway (or, in California-speak, THE Pacific Highway)(or simply, THE 1). My plan was to get to the coast and turn left towards San Diego and along the way find a cheap motel or campground somewhere around Santa Cruz or maybe Monterey. A kind of light day driving to celebrate the end of my East to West journey.

And, of course, none of that happened.

What did happen was that I was able to get around the south side of San Francisco with fairly light traffic (for California) and go from a brilliantly blue sky morning into the marine layer fog of Pacifica as I turned onto THE 1 which is another thing that annoys me about California. Not THE 1, the daily marine layer over the coast. Miss Carol and me have been to California many times over the years and I’ve always wondered how anyone can wake up in a good mood when it’s foggy and damp every single morning.

And, while we’re on the subject, if it’s foggy and damp every single morning from the cold ocean air blowing in over the land why don’t things rust in California? In Knott’s Island on the East Coast I can lay awake and listen to things rust. Fucking California.

But, to give the California coast it’s due, the Pacific Coast Highway (I mean, THE Pacific Coast Highway) is spectacularly beautiful.

Somewhere on the PCH.

And I would get to find out just how beautiful it was because I got to drive a huge portion of it that day. Santa Cruz and Monterey were no-go’s, they had grown like weeds since the last time Miss Carol and me visited. So I drove. On and on. And every campground I passed had a sign posted stating that it was FULL. So I drove. On and on. Ever southward, the spectacularity gradually being replaced with a diminishing hope of finding a place to stop because one of the things about THE PCH is that, once you get on it, you can’t get off it. There are no exits pointing you to different places. So I drove. On and on.

Finally, in San Simeon, while I was on the phone with Miss Carol hoping she could find me a place to stay for the night, I saw a motel with a vacancy sign. I hung up on Miss Carol, swerved into the parking lot, skidded to a stop, and as I was walking towards the motel office a woman posted a hand written NO VACANCY sign.

I went in anyway and said- you’re kidding, right?

And the lovely woman behind the desk said- no, I’m sorry, I just had a reservation for our last room.

And I said- Just out of curiosity, what are your rooms going for?

And the lovely woman behind the desk smiled and said- $400

And I said-

And the lovely woman behind the desk smiled and said- plus tax

So I got back onto the stupidly spectacular PCH and headed south. While I drove I called Miss Carol back to see if you could help and just as I was telling her what had happened at the motel I saw a sign for San Simeon State Campground and after I turned in, another sign told me that the RV sites were full but the camping sites were not. I pulled up to the gate and was told that they had one campsite left and I said that’s perfect because one is all I need.

$35.

San Simeon campground

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Camino.

Posted on June 7, 2026 | Leave a comment

When I left Austin Nevada early the next morning not much was moving in the dead or dying town. Just a few tractor trailers rumbling through and not stopping. I stopped at the newish gas station, the one at the west end of town, the one that the little woman at The Owl Club swore she would never go to because it was owned by her ex and she was damned if she’d give HIM any of her money, and got a cup of coffee that I felt just a little guilty about.

I was headed to Camino California, about 300 some odd miles and five hours away and home to Sand Flats Campground in the Eldorado National Forest among other things. I’d found Sand Flats using ChatGPT, something I’d started using after my little sister told me about using it way back Purcellville VA. And it works, so maybe old dogs can be taught new tricks.

Back on Route 50 I absorbed the loneliness and the vastness and the emptiness and just cruised along thinking of nothing and no one. The sky was an unchanging blue, the land an unchanging brown, and the road an unchanging sunburnt black macadam and on and on it rolled and so did I.

Along the way, about sixty miles west of Austin I passed through Middlegate Nevada, the even smaller, even more dead town that Dan the bartender had started walking from before being picked up by the owner of The Owl Club and having his life changed. Sixty miles he was prepared to walk through this nothingness in the hopes that Austin would be better than Middlegate. You gotta admire that.

Another fifty or sixty miles and I got to Fallon Nevada with all of the chain restaurants and gas stations that you find everywhere and anywhere in America and stopped at the Walmart to get some groceries. Say what you will, sometimes a Walmart can seem like an oasis, you know?

It was when I passed into California that Kimi (my gps) and me started to have a problem with one another. All across America Kimi had been trying to get me onto the shortest route between places instead of Route 50 but it wasn’t until we were getting close to Camino that it became an issue.

I was sure that Kimi was set on taking me off of 50 and onto a better route to the Sand Flats campground so I ignored her pleas to take the next exit and turn around again and again. I was positive that Camino was west of Placerville and so I cursed Kimi saying fuck you, we’re not going that way.

28 miles later I saw a sign for Placerville.

I took the next exit that Kimi suggested and pulled onto the shoulder to look at my map. I’d been wrong all along. Camino was east of Placerville, not west. I apologized to Kimi but she just gave me the gps finger and told me to turn around and bend over, she was going to drive for awhile.

So I did and we backtracked the 28 miles to Camino and the original exit that Kimi had told me to take and we climbed yet ANOTHER twisty, hairpin turney, guardrail-less, mountain road to an entrance to Eldorado National Park that was chained, locked, and gated closed. I actually thought about just camping right there. Instead I got out and peed on the gate and then searched my iPhone for a motel close by.

There were a couple in Camino, back down the scary mountain road so I headed back. Along the way I saw what I had thought was some new construction on my way up. But it had a couple of cars and a Ranger’s truck in front of it so I pulled in, and as I did the Park Ranger was walking out with his lunch and I asked him if it was open and he said yes, it had just opened the day before and I was in luck because Eldorado wouldn’t open until the next day.

And, boy howdy, was I ever. Maybe peeing on the gate helped.

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The lonely road.

Posted on June 4, 2026 | Leave a comment

Nevada bills its segment of Route 50 as The Loneliest Road in America. A fairly bold statement, but Nevada may be right. Route 50 through the state is certainly lonely and a part of me wonders why, in this day and age, more Americans aren’t crowding into the state and onto Route 50 to experience the novelty of the loneliness, only to be left sitting in the bogged down barely moving traffic wondering where the lonely road is or was.

But for whatever reason they don’t and I’m left alone hurtling down the road at 60 or 70 miles an hour watching as the faraway mountains slowly, oh sooooo verrrry slooooowwwly, creep towards me when a second thought crowds out the first and I wonder what it must of been like for the first pioneers to WALK across this immense flatness.

And I think I would have lost my mind.

I’ve booked a room at The Cozy Mountain Motel in Austin Nevada for the night because it’s gonna be too cold to camp again and after driving down a steep, scary, guardrail-less mountain road (yes, I finally got to the damn distant mountains) I come into the little town of Austin. It’s early afternoon and I’m hungry. All I’ve eaten all day are some cashews and tangerine slices and as I drive I see only a couple possibilities for food- on the right is a bar/restaurant, at the west end of Austin is a gas station, and The Owl Club.

I need gas and ice so I check out the gas station first. Nothing. Just the normal junk food crap you find in any gas station anywhere in America. I gas up, get ice, and go to The Cozy Mountain Motel to check in and then I walk up the street to the bar/restaurant I saw coming in and when I get there I see that it’s been closed by order of the fire marshal.

That leaves The Owl Club.

When I walk in the guy behind the bar looks a little surprised that anyone came in, especially a stranger. There’s no one else in the place and as I sit, I ask for a beer and maybe a menu? Now, he really looks uncomfortable. He hands me a can of beer and tells me that if I want something to eat it’ll take about twenty minutes for the fryer to heat up and I say, well what if I don’t want anything fried, and he says that the only things on the menu are pizza and french fries. And I would have to buy a whole pizza so I tell him not to bother, I’ll just drink my beer and he looks relieved.

And that’s the beginning to one of the most interesting afternoons of my trip.

During the course of the next few hours I’ll learn that-

-Dan (I never did ask his name so let’s call him Dan) has only been the bartender for about a week. He’d been picked up on Route 50 by the The Owl Club owner as he was walking to Austin from the next town down the road (about 30 miles away) and during the ride he and The Owl Club owner strike a deal whereby Dan will work for tips and keep the door open while the owner is working his day job and in return Dan gets a room over the bar

-that everything, and I mean everything, in the bar is for sale- clothes, pictures, books, typewriters, bikes, shoes-it’s like a bar inside a yard sale

-that Dan is patiently tracing a picture of a church

-that the first “Nickel with a Pickle back” is free to new customers. When a second patron comes in, a very big, very jiggly woman and orders a Mountain Dew and a shot of Tequila, Dan remembers the free drink offer and since he and the very big, very jiggly woman are going to have one, he pours three

-that a “Nickel with a Pickle back” is a $5 shot of whiskey followed by a shot of pickle juice and that it must be an acquired taste

-that there are only about 80 people still living in Austin. Unless you count the 20 or so ranchers who come into town to pick up their mail- this from the third patron to come in, a much smaller woman clutching her four dollars for her nightly beer

-that aren’t any jobs really and that the closest grocery store is over a hundred miles away

-that even with all of this these people are happy

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I shore ain’t in Kansas no mo.

Posted on May 31, 2026 | Leave a comment

At 11,312 feet above sea level Monarch Mountain Pass on Route 50 is one of the most dangerous roads in America.

I did not know this when I drove it, but I did know that it was an awfully curvy, awfully high, and awfully spectacularly beautiful road to drive.

As I summited the Pass, I began to suspect something might be important about this stretch of Route 50 when I saw people taking pictures of one another in front of the Monarch Mountain Pass sign at the summit.

That suspicion grew towards certainty when, about a mile down from the summit, I passed an upside down tractor trailer that had flipped over taking the left hand curve too fast and had slid a short way down the embankment.

The certainty became conviction when I googled it and watched a YouTube video about Monarch Pass, but by then I was safely down and off the mountain and in a motel for the night because it was forecast to be too cold to camp.

I spent two nights in Colorado.

The first was in La Junta at the very first KOA campground I’ve ever been in and, like the first of anything, will probably be the most memorable. As I was checking in, I was noticing a lot of tarantula-themed merchandise for sale. There was even a large rock paperweight with a painting of a tarantula on it on the counter and when I asked the girl about it, she told me that every September there is a tarantula festival in La Junta because the tarantulas totter into town to mate.

My second night was in Montrose at the Minecart Motor Lodge. I had called earlier in the day when I’d stopped for gas because Mr. ChatGPT told me it got great reviews and the price wasn’t too bad. So I booked it. But as I drove into Montrose I passed a couple of motels that looked really nice and I hoped that Minecart Motor Lodge would look as nice.

It didn’t. In fact, as I drove by it, it looked like the kinda place that might rent rooms by the hour. I even tried to weasel out of the reservation so that I could stay in one of the other, nicer-looking motels.

But I couldn’t and I didn’t and it turns out I was wrong. Come to find out, the Minecart Motor Lodge has new owners and they are renovating the motel from the rooms out. The rooms are really nice. Simple, but really nice. And they don’t rent by the hour.

So Colorado gave me a spectacularly dangerous road to drive, my first KOA experience, and a reminder NOT to judge a book (or a place) by it’s cover.

Thanks, Colorado.

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Rosebud.

Posted on May 19, 2026 | 3 comments

When I left Lakeside RV campground the next morning the skies were cloudy and the wind was picking up. I stopped for gas and coffee on SR 130 before picking up 50 West. As soon as I turned onto 50 the clouds had thickened and darkened and bolts of lightning were beginning to flash all over on the horizon.

The wind strengthened, the lightning got crazier and off to my right I could see an especially dark cloud that seemed to be trying to dip and become a funnel(?). I sped up, which is actually kind of useless and funny give the immensity of a storm over something as flat as Illinois, but I kept checking the progress of the storm and my own comparatively minuscule progress west on 50.

Ultimately, however, nothing happened except that Turtle and me got pelted with a helluva thunderstorm. After the storm and I passed one another, I saw a Walmart (which are like rashes) and I stopped to pick up a couple of things.

And then it was back onto 50 and out of Illinois and into Missouri- which would prove to be the best and the worst of my trip so far.

(Quick note: on the map it looks like Route 50 takes you through St. Louis and I was kinda looking forward to it since I’ve never been there but instead of taking me through the city (like it does in Cincinnati and Washington) 50 joins up with the beltway around the city so I never saw much of St. Louis)

Anyway. Back to the best and the worst.

THE BEST- Hands down it is Rosebud. It’s a quaint, cute little town between slow down and resume speed where it seems as if the people there are born there, raised there, go to school there, get married to their high school sweethearts there, have kids there, and die there.

I stopped at The Rosebud General Store because they were selling gas for $4.09/gal! As I was filling my tank with relatively inexpensive fuel I saw, on the gas pump, a hand lettered little sign saying free water with a gas purchase. So after I filled up I went inside to see if it was true and the cute little girl at the register said- absolutely and gestured to her right where back near a cooler another cute little girl was holding out an ice cold bottled water.

Cheap gas and a cute little girl handing me an ice cold bottle of water. Ah, Rosebud, you stole my heart.

THE WORST- Sedalia. I would be stopping for the night in Sedalia. I had chosen Sedalia because there was a State Park campground at the Missouri State fairgrounds. The Missouri State fair wasn’t until August so I figured it would be nice and quiet. And it was. Too much so. Once I finally found it.

When you come into Sedalia, it’s pretty much like a lot of little towns so I was looking forward to camping for the night. But then you get into the five mile stretch of Route 50 closest to the fairgrounds and it is five miles of the worst that America has to offer. It is chain store, food chain, retail run amuck and awry. It is all paved and curbed and billboarded and the few little hopeful islands of grass that somehow remain just look sad.

And then I missed my turn. The only sign I saw was for State Fairgrounds Community College so I’m thinking I don’t want to go there and it took me six miles out of town to decide that it probably was what I wanted and turn around.

I had been expecting a State campground near the fairgrounds. Instead, it’s a campground ON the fairgrounds. I drove into a gate directing me to the campground and it was like driving into an enormous drive-in movie theater. Just row after row after row of hookups in this big field. No camp store. No facilities. No ice. No nothing. Just a big field with maybe a half dozen RV’s sitting parked in the hot, humid sun.

I pulled into a site and sat and thought for a minute and said- fuck this. I pulled up my search for campgrounds in the area and found Countryside RV close by and figured it’s got to be better than this. And it was. Just barely.

Located behind an industrial fencing company and some kind of welding shop, Countryside has about thirty sites most of have permanent campers on them. It also has the most disgusting bathroom and showers I’ve ever seen. But I paid my $40 fee for the night, went back out to get ice at a gas station with bars over the tiny windows and door and settled in with the flies for the night.

I was never so happy to leave.

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Crossroads no more.

Posted on May 17, 2026 | Leave a comment

When I crossed into Indiana I noticed that the state’s welcome had changed. No longer was Indiana the Crossroads of America, it is now the More to Discover state which has apparently drawn the the ire of a number of it’s citizens. They don’t like it. And I don’t blame them, but, then again, I don’t live there.

Nor was I even in Indiana long enought to discover much of anything. It only takes about three hours to cross the state from east to west so about the only thing I discovered in Indiana was that the state is home to a shit ton of yard sales- at least along Route 50.

It seemed like every five or ten miles I was passing another yard sale. And these aren’t just little card table affairs with Sis and Mom or Junior and Dad trying to sell the stuff they no longer want but can’t bring themselves to throw away figuring that “well hell, for a dollar, someone’s gonna want this”.

Nor are these the quiet little yard sales you see in a neighbors driveway on a quiet weekend morning.

These are sprawling affairs of compulsive buying running right up to within twenty feet of Route 50 showcasing (and selling) everything imagineable. Trinkets, jewelry, arts and crafts, books, clothes, shoes, pots and pans and dishes, lawn mowers and weed wackers, sometimes a car or a motorcycle. I even saw a boat and an RV at one yard sale as I passed by.

A few even looked interesting enough to entice me to stop and shop. But I needed to get to Illinois and my campground for the night so I tucked my compulsive buyer and buyers remorse away and drove on.

One of the first things you notice when you cross the border into Illinois is that also cross from the Eastern to the Central Time Zone and all your electronics turn back the pages of time one hour so you get to re-live that hour again. Which begs the question- if you could travel west fast enough to keep re-doing that same hour, would you live forever?

I pondered this for the hour or so until I arrived at Lakeside RV in Olney, Illinois and met the owner Jerry. As Jerry said- Lakeside RV is, or has become, more of a fish camp than an RV campground. And it shows. Most of the RV’s there aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, if ever. The owners have built decks onto them, roofs and additons. It’s more of a place that the owners come to on weekends to fish and drink and tell stories about the one that got away.

But Jerry still keeps a couple of transient spots, so I was home for the night.

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Verticality.

Posted on May 14, 2026 | 1 comment

Next up was Wild and Wonderful West Virginia.

Where homes cling to the mountainside with driveways that fall away or climb from the road like amusement park rides and Route 50 (or maybe ALL roads in West Virginia) have more curves than a 36DD stripper.

Driving in West Virginia is spectacular and spectacularly exciting and exhausting. The views are magnificent but the roads are relentlessly curving left and right as they corkscrew up and down the seemingly endless West Virginia mountains. As soon as you get to the bottom (or top) of one elevation and catch your breath for the maybe short half mile stretch of straight road (West Virginia DOT hates straight- I’m convinced of this) you start up or down ANOTHER 9% grade.

But the views. Simply amazing.

So as I wrestled Turtle (I think I’ve decided to call my truck/camper Turtle)(because that’s what it looks like) up and down and back and forth, braking hard and accelerating harder, I marveled at the scenery.

I’m a flatlander. We don’t even have any little bitty hills in Virginia Beach or Knott’s Island, so to be winding up (or down) a mountain road with a cliff high above on one side and a cliff plunging away on the other was like driving in a 4th dimension.

Anyway.

I got to Davis and my brother-in-law showed me around and we spent some time together before he had to leave and then I had too much to drink while watching the very worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life. (Anybody But Him)

The next morning when I was brushing my teeth, I realized that my Gezellig, my cozy comfort level was gone, the places I knew and were familiar with were behind me now and that I had asked for this and I’d got it.

And I wavered.

But then, as I stared at my hungover self in the mirror, with toothpaste smeared in my beard and mustache, I said to myself- stop being such a pussy.

And got dressed and loaded up and went out to wrestle the mountains roads some more.

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