This is the time of year that I love. A few weeks before the campers arrive, the campground is peaceful, quiet, and serene, and I have this wonderful piece of wildness to myself. It is not just the opportunity to sit quietly sipping hot herb tea as I watch snow fall outside my window.…
What is a snowbird to do when it is too windy to kayak? Over the last few weeks, I have spent many hours online researching my ancestry. A friend got me started, and since then I slid deeply down the ancestry.com rabbit hole where I remain even today. So what have I discovered? The direct…
I promised to write about the people I meet while traveling. Then, with Covid, travel stopped. Now, I am on an extended camping trip but, due to distancing, I am not really meeting anyone. Just the camp host here in the Sawtooth Mountains. We chat but I have not learned enough about him to write…
When I heard that our president had decided to hold back the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) funding, I felt outraged. I adhere to the liberal belief that the U.S. has a responsibility to share our knowledge and resources with our fellow global citizens, especially in the field of public health. Caring about and promoting the…
About a month ago I asked friends and family where they thought God might be in this pandemic. After I summarized their thoughts, I mentioned that I would attempt at some point to summarize my own thoughts. That project has taken longer than I expected, partially because right after that I started an email book…
Every afternoon I go to the clubhouse in the RV park where I am staying. I like a change of scenery after sitting around all morning, and I like the streaming quality WiFi. The cookies set out each day aren’t bad either! When I first arrived at the park, I met lots of people over…
“Birth of Coronavirus 2”, March 2020 The results are in! Thanks to everyone who took a few moments to share their thoughts about “where” we might find God in this pandemic. I learned a great deal through this and am thankful that I took the time to ask others what they think. As I…
I have been writing about my own opinions and experiences for too long, and I vowed just last week to write about life from the perspective of others. It is challenging to be sure. I have several drafts in the works but nothing much posted. Now this, the pandemic, which some people are calling a…
I realized with some dismay that if I contract the coronavirus and get sick, I will be doomed to eat canned chicken soup. I bought those red and white cans in abundance thinking I was wisely preparing for the worst. I see now that a daily diet of salty, flavorless chicken soup could be worse…
I promised to write about the people I meet in my nomadic life. However, writing about others is kind of tricky, especially if they might read what you just said about them. Do you need permission from them first? What if they are offended by what you say about them? Caution and sensitivity are required.…
Taking a break from blogging was a good idea. I was tired of writing about everything from my own perspective, and I needed the space to find a new writing focus. In the meantime, I met up with some new traveler groups and found lots of new traveling friends. I realized that it is the…
I dig the desert! Not literally, of course, with a pick or shovel. I dig it in the slang sense: I love it. It makes me happy from the inside out. My dad used the term “dig it” back in the day when he lived in NYC and was a writer. Sometimes he assumed the…
Tango and I have been at Death Valley (Sunset Campground) for 3 weeks. For two of those weeks, we hung out with the single RVers group, Escapees Solos. The gathering is planned every year to coincide with the 49ers Encampment, a music and history festival. We are pulling out today but first, like every other…
I finally had my DNA tested through Ancestry.com. I had bought kits for others as gifts over the years but never tested my own. It did not seem necessary. I knew the results for my half brother and my son. Plain vanilla Northern European profiles. What more could I possibly learn from testing my own…
The drive from Pahrump, NV to Death Valley National Park was less than 2 hours. It should have been quicker, but I was buffeted by winds and slowed down to 40 MPH. For once, other drivers did not honk at me out of frustration. Of course, there weren’t too many people out there and those…
