Parke County, Indiana. Looking for the Mill Creek Covered Bridge, I turned left when I should’ve turned right. The road winds through some cornfields until the cornfields end and the road dips into a dark, woody hollow. It’s a foreboding place. A twinge of anxiety in my gut. Just about to the bottom of the …
A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting a Spring 2021 road trip. Continued from the post, Route 66: Diners, Twin Arrows And Trading Posts, (link here). The van rocks and bumps as it grinds out of the dirt lot near Twin Arrows, Arizona. Lexi, my canine backseat driver is standing behind me, peering …
A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting a Spring 2021 road trip. Today in America time is money and very few have time and money to call their own. If you work, the chances are that work won’t bless you with the time or the money to take the great American road trip. …
How many more lives will it take? Well that’s a damn good question. Answers? Anybody? Helloooo! To the surprise of absolutely no one, another American town has adopted the slogan “_______(fill in the town name) strong.” This time it’s Highland Park, Illinois, where, to the surprise of absolutely no one, a mass shooting occurred. In …
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The Second Amendment. Probably the most contentious twenty-seven words in the entire Constitution. I don’t hate The Second Amendment, but I don’t like it either. I don’t own …
Sometime this summer, a leaked draft opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito will be finalized and what many thought as unthinkable will shortly come to pass; Roe v Wade will be overturned. Many who support choice feel blindsided. But should we? I was exchanging texts with a friend about random things, nothing serious, …
A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. This post is a continuation of the post, A Coffee Shop Morning: Chewing on Life September 23rd, 2021, driving southbound in Eastern Iowa. Off to my left is the Mississippi River and somewhere deep in the river bottom …
“It’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.” ~ Judy Blume I just recently finished reading Art Spiegelman’s, Maus, …
I was browsing some interesting photo blog posts and, while I wasn’t particularly lost I did find a provocative challenge – lost. Debbye Smythe hosts the the Sunday One Word Challenge and one could get lost in all the possibilities. And so….. I hear the word lost quite often in our house. One of my …
A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. “Plans should be ephemeral, so be prepared to move away from them.” ~ Anthony Bourdain. Nine o’clock on a weekday morning is never a good time to get on the road in a major metropolitan area. But, instead …
“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless – like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” ~ Bruce Lee …
A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. Continued from Contemplating The Mystery Box. Out there, between Denver and Pittsburgh, lay a broad land I’d barely seen. A once vast grassland that had become countless square plots of cornfields and soybean fields, splashed with small towns …
“The seller of lightning-rods arrived just ahead of the storm. He came along the street of Green Town, Illinois, in the late cloudy October day, sneaking glances over his shoulder. Somewhere not so far back, vast lightnings stomped the earth. Somewhere, a storm like a great beast with terrible teeth could not be denied.” When …
I hadn’t planned on doing a New Years/year end post until I turned on the Sun Bowl Game and something sort of clicked (or clunked depending on the reader’s point of view). It certainly doesn’t feel like New Years Eve. It was a desultory little crowd at the Sun Bowl Game in El Paso, Texas. …
A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. Once you post it on social media, you own it. Doesn’t really matter what it is. It could be something as sweet as an approbation or as vile as a slur. Like it or not, it’s yours to …
A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. Throughout the years that I’ve been blogging, I’ve often searched for new blogs to follow. Maybe I was looking for something in my areas of interest; history, photography or politics. Maybe it was a search for new ideas, …
The Red Lodge, Montana area attracts hunters, fishermen, hikers and campers, but my single purpose was to drive the Beartooth Scenic Highway. Sixty five miles long, starting at Red Lodge, the Beartooth snakes up the Beartooth Mountains to an elevation of just under 11,000 feet before dropping down into the twin towns Cooke City and …
At the northernmost edge of the town of Red Lodge, Montana, a cabin hewn of logs and caulking sits amid a ring of river stones in front of the Red Lodge Visitor Center. If the old cabin were sitting deep in the woods at the end of a dusty road it wouldn’t draw a glance, …
“Well, we’re not in the middle of nowhere, but we can see it from here.” ~ Thelma & Louise It seemed that way sometimes, those times when we got a little bit lost and found ourselves on a long stretch of a desolate county road. It’s on those roads when you haven’t seen a passing …
Two routes lead from Sheridan, Wyoming to Red Lodge, Montana. The quicker is to take 90 north into Montana, till you get to Hardin. At Hardin, you make a hard left and head into Billings, born as a railroad town in 1882, and grown up to be the state’s largest city. From Billings you slide …