I toured a Southern plantation a few years ago, and while I found it fascinating, it was also disturbing. The focus was on the plantation house and its elegant décor, plantation family history, and how sugar cane was harvested and…
Louisiana Swamp Tour
The Saturday after Thanksgiving, both my sister and my older brother returned home with their families. We weren’t leaving till Monday, though, and my brother Dave thought it would be fun to go on a swamp tour in an air…
New Orleans Reunion
For most of the last 33 years, Kate and I have hosted Thanksgiving dinner at our house. This was to be our first major holiday on the road, away from friends and family. My younger brother and his family live…
Warranty Woes
There’s no way around it. You have an RV, you’re going to have issues. Some big, some small. If you’re traveling, you have to count on some time spent in repair shops. We bought a new RV hoping to avoid…
Savannah, Georgia
A Little History Savannah was the first British colony in Georgia, established in 1733 by General James Oglethorpe, representing King George III. The intent was to create a buffer between Charleston and the French (in Louisiana) and Spanish (in Florida),…
Mud Hole Misery
Maybe it was that we had just left behind an idyllic day at my new favorite campground (Huntington Beach). Maybe it was the weather shift from sun the day before to pouring rain, and now an oppressive gray. But when…
Huntington Beach, South Carolina
When we crossed over the North/South Carolina state line, I could officially say I have now been in all 50 states. And Kate is only missing Alaska. I couldn’t believe I had left this state for last, because at least…
Chapel Hill Connections
Denise and I met in Santa Cruz in 1977. We’d both just arrived as fresh-faced young lesbians, right out of college, trying to figure out how we fit in to the bustling metropolis of a lesbian community that Santa Cruz…
North Carolina Respite
We left the Smokies to stay for three nights in a Thousand Trails RV Park near Winston-Salem, North Carolina. As much as I would have loved to explore the Smokies some more, this gave us a couple of days to…
Smoky Mountains
I remember driving through the Smoky Mountains with my family when I was a kid and looking down into a green valley at a log cabin with smoke drifting from the chimney and thinking, “That’s where I want to live.”…
Lexington, Kentucky
After we visited the Shaker Village, we drove north for 30 minutes or so to Wildside Winery, which offers free overnight stays to members of Harvest Hosts. We got there in time for Kate to enjoy a wine-tasting flight and…
Thinking Outside the Bag
I’m thinking about Paris. Wondering what it would be like to be having a wonderful time in the most romanticized city on earth and suddenly be in the midst of a one-way war. It’s hard not to dwell on the…