First Band on Party Cove

Millstone Lodge, as I remember it, is gone.  Too bad.  In its day, the lodge provided one of the hotspots that kept the Lake of the Ozarks steaming.  Of course, that’s a bygone era, before you could scarab from the … Read More

Tour Guide on the Rio Grande

In 1818, Boonslick, Missouri resident Lindsay Carson was killed by a falling tree. His widow, Rebecca Robinson, raised 15 children by herself. Their 11th child, a kid named Kit, was sent to work in a saddle shop in Franklin, Missouri, … Read More

Flower

Stopped in Albuquerque to pick up 400 pounds of floor tile. Passed Sandia Mountain and drove up to Santa Fe’s rarified air. At 7200 feet, we got a boost from a bowl of fiery green chile chicken soup. Then Cheryl … Read More

A Bench Back In Time

The one-two punch of Santa Fe’s rarified air (7200 ft elevation) and Canyon Road shopping kicked my ass. I spied a bench, only partially occupied by an old friend from back home. Tipped my cap to this bronzed bard. He … Read More

The Scents of Steinbeck

“Cannery Row in Monterey California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, … Read More

Aruba dabba doo

The island has no stoplights. And nary a discouraging word about roundabouts. The people are too happy to bitch. Even the crabs are civil to the pelicans. And the iguanas know you want to feed them. The flamingos don’t worry … Read More

Caribbean Sunset. 35,000 feet

It was a cosmic gift in this season of giving. Aruba sent us home through a holiday light show. A circus parade of cloudtops roostertailing through shadows and light pointing to the outer membrane of this space bubble as one … Read More

Glacier

We don’t know what we don’t know. Driving up the Going to the Sun Road, I thought Glacier National Park had one big glacier. Nope. There are thirty five glaciers in the park. In 1850 there were 150. The survivors … Read More

Fly Fishing

Montana’s Madison River valley opened up like a Georgia O’Keefe flower. Big sky. Just past the cowgirl whose boyfriend lost his head, we spied a shotgun shack, a fixer upper we agreed would make a fine one-lane bowling alley. Helena … Read More

Jackson

The valley is Jackson Hole. The town is Jackson. Both are named not for the guy on the twenty dollar bill, but for fur trapper Davey Jackson, one of the first Americans of European descent to winter in the valley … Read More