Fine Tuning The Art of Melding RV Dreams with a Victorian Village Lifestyle

Awaiting May in Lovely Ouray...getting Lovelier every day. Still, not a month "Home" from a winter's worth of road-tripping, Colorado to Utah to Arizona and back, mental dialog over my two, make that all three "mistresses," comes to a boil. "Where, when, how long." If you will pardon the pun, being a wandering "polygamist" isn't as easy as it's cracked up to be.

Botanical Gardens: Alcohol Free Mental Health Aids For Prisoners of War In Siberia

Sitting by the fire, gazing out the Imax Windows...watching it snow. My second cup of coffee is down to its last swallow and the Idea Fairy plays hooky from the right segments of my brain...which leaves me half-witted when it comes to penning philosophically rich prose and poetry that might help tread-millers make it to Hump-Day. Perhaps now would be a good time to jot down a few notes on how to record TV shows on the DVR, so we can skip through the vast wasteland of mind-numbing banality that occupies an ever-increasing portion of said shows...of which there are only about three that remain worth watching. Please pardon me while I go look for a Kindergartener who can assist me with the absolute befuddlement of programming instructions.

Utah on my mind: car, windows and other places the sun doesn’t shine: Confessions of a spoiled Snowbird

My April Column for the Ouray County Plaindealer. Have a great weekend!

When Chaos Supplants Natural Order...The Fragility Of Dreams

Here is an analogy with multifarious applications. Today, I apply it to my aversion to substandard weather: Life is a lot like baking a cake. Always indulge the batter...just in case you end up burning the cake. Of course one runs the risk of ending up with a tummy ache and a smaller cake (or, in my case, a cupcake (burp)), but they own the great satisfaction of having stayed on the offensive and lived in the moment...that you not only stopped to "smell roses," you gobbled them down while you could!

The Rites and Wrongs of Spring

All was well in the land of Ray; this is what we came home to. Snow, yes, but retreating up the mountainsides right on schedule. Lower perimeter trails were muddy in places but at least open. The ballpark's outfield grass was spring green; kids in shorts nursed iced drinks, swung bats, and flung frisbees. Fido's, in a fit of surging hormones and spring fever, nosed the turf for lush bouquets of previous Fidettes, and the most romantic spot to leave a "Love Note." Apparently dogs can tell a lot about each other with such acute senses of smell. (Wow, I like to meet her at third base!)

Flashback To Saguaro National Park...Desert Blooms and DiamondBacks

Mariah paid a visit to Lovely Ouray yesterday...as in wind, not Carey. Just as well since I couldn't go out and play due to a 24 hour extended grace period about to expire. I needed to focus...finish my column for the Ouray County Plaindealer. Someday putting things off till the last second is going to bite me in the behind. But I like living on the adrenalized edge...that razor sharp line between panic and production. The issue with my column comes out on thursday, I'll try to remember to throw up a link...in case the BCB Journal isn't malaise enough for you. It's about coming off the road to our "sticks and bricks" in Lovely Ouray, which wasn't so "lovely" the day I was trying to write. At least the snow that falls this morning is vertical instead of horizontal. It's little spring straws like that that one must cling to while waiting on summer (sigh). 

Indecent Exposures...Fukengruven In Jerome

Jerome Arizona is Sausalito without the Bay, Santorini without the money, Bisbee without the pit...only a bit more falling down and architecturally poorer. Like Bisbee, Jerome has a birthright of shiny Copper, and a epitaph of rusted Volkswagens. But there is no funeral to weep over, for in the end, rust is the new gold...a magnet for money.

Benchwarmer Gets Back Into The Game: CPR For The Soul

Every Spring, while half the world busies itself with Renewal and Life...awakening from the cold, dark blight of winter...getting outdoors instead of reading blogs (as they should), the Wanderer seems to go out of sync with the Universe. Sometimes, like when I've just come off the road and everybody else is still out playing...and another monster snowstorm is baring down...and readers have better things to do, it feels as if a collective Yawn goes up from the Cosmos; apathy (pathos?) regarding my life-choices, objectives and purposeful intentions. Maybe I should just suspend the BCB till Mud Season is over.

"Downsizing Doug," Author and Project Manager-Turned-RV'er D. Dale Thompson Still Going Strong At 85

You meet the darnedest RV people way out in the middle of "Nowhere," Utah. Nimble, quick witted and spy for his 85 years, Doug Thompson keeps "Life" on the defensive by attacking. His name should be "Jack," as in "of all trades," as his "hats" include, author, former project manager, contractor, and developer. He even built the RV park we were staying in, and gave it to his daughter. Doug was in the middle of downsizing his RV lifestyle when our paths intersected at Cottonwood RV Park in "Blink-and-U-miss-it," Bluff.  

Sitting In Purgatory

It's 14 degrees this morning, and snow continues pile up in The Crevice. It's enough to cause a second guesser to question his decision to beat this storm home—as opposed to waiting it out in the lower elevations of Utah. But what's done is done. At least I have two places to get throughly warmed to the bone; by the fire, and in the hot springs water. Ten inches of snow and counting on poor Mini Pearl...an Arizona gal not used to such conditions. I really need to go shovel the deck before my snow shovel gets buried.

Home Sweet Home, Just In Time For Spring Snow n Blow

Say it isn't so...we made it home to Lovely Ouray on Saturday; but Ouray isn't so Lovely today. You see, every spring Utah pays a visit to western Colorado...in the form of red dust born on jet-stream winds. Sitting in our driveway, iPhone to ear, listening to Maikel of the Wiseones describe the Red Menace out their Airstream windows in Valley of the Gods, I was about to be thankful that we bailed early. That's when skies over The Crevice began to darken...an erie reddish brown. Then it started to rain, streaking the windshield with rivulets of red slurry. Gee, what a welcome spring hath wrought. 

Heathens In Valley Of The Gods: On Genocidal Arrogance

It's hard for me to wander through southeast Utah, what with its Monument Valleys, Valleys of the Gods and Canyon-lands, replete with Anasazi heritage and cultural artifacts, without waxing a tad melodramatic. So sue me. Here, today, among landscapes that played across a black and white childhood TV...the one that introduced me to John Wayne, John Ford, and various heroines de jour, it's possible to lose a century, maybe even two, in the blink of a mile. We are running out of places like this. I mean no disrespect to the "Williamsburgs" and "Plymouth Rocks" out there, but they have been turned into something resembling Disneyland...Epcot towns where food-fare is a bigger draw than history, places where re-enactments fall short of what imaginations could better do. It's like the difference between "the book" and "the movie." Too many people doth spoil a "ghost town," Pilgrim.   

BAM! Persistence and Stupidity Pays Off Big Time

It was the kind of day only a rattlesnake could love... hot, still, a full high desert sun bearing down like a blowtorch. It was exhausting, minding each footfall to avoid a run in with a rattler. They can be hard to spot in glaring sunlight...brightness that renders shade black as night. I kept removing sunglasses while easing through sagebrush and groves of ghastly cottonwoods, fully aware that the snakebite kit was in my backpack, which was in the car...along with water. 

"Lightning Striking Again, and Again and Again and Again"

Today's Blog Title will be lost on the youngsters out there. I was just a sixteen year old wet behind the ears kid when Lou Christie's "Lightning Strikes" hit the charts in 1966. I was, and remain to this day, a fan of pure falsetto...and no one did it better than Frankie Valli and Lou Christie. The "Lightning" that keeps "Striking" is the good fortune of stumbling across quality ruins close to our Cedar Mesa boondock...outstanding enough to take my mind off Goldie's tranny, and whether we will make it home to Lovely Ouray.

Wanderluck Strikes Again

If you will indulge a moment of rare, and I mean really, really rare, glass-half-full philosophical reflections from an unrepentant cynic, I think it will be worth your time ("Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But God is a myth, a fairytale for the weak of mind).

Risky Business

Just a note to let you know that we made it from the Village of Oak Creek, Arizona, to Bluff, Utah, yesterday. Goldie's tranny continues to weep; not so much a tearful blubber as it is a near dry-eyed whimper, at least as long as I'm motoring down the road. It's more when I stop, and leave the old girl in drive that really gets her tears to puddling.

The Last Straw and The Last Supper

Our boondock camp was broken about 7:30 AM yesterday in order to make an appointment with the Ford dealer in Cottonwood by eight. We had a bag packed, just in case. I covered all the history of Goldie's tranny illness with the Service Manager, symptom by symptom, day by day. After about an hour, he said last what he could and should have said first. That's when the last straw broke...along with my temper. What a waste of time when someone passes on critical information as an addendum or post script. "Oh, by the way," he says, "Just to be honest with you..."

It's Just Another Coati Mundi

Manic Monday: Stuck in a Negative Vortex somewhere near Sedona, Arizona.