Every year I head north to the Skagit Valley to catch the tulip fields in bloom. If you’re looking for good travel weather, spring is a tricky time of year in the Northwest. But if you manage to get there on a rare sunny day, you’ll be in for a treat. The whole valley lights… More
Category: Country Mouse
40-watt bulbsSkagit Valley, Washington
Ka-bloomBig Bend National Park, Texas
Posted 11 years ago
The Tailor and I visited Big Bend in mid-April, our best chance to catch the cacti in bloom. When we got there, a park ranger warned us not to get our hopes up. He told us they’d been experiencing a record drought—the park had only received about three inches of rain, total, over the past… More
Desert oasisHotel El Capitan, Van Horn, TX
Posted 11 years ago
This place really felt like an oasis, after driving for over sixteen hours—the last three in a raging West-Texas lightning storm—to get here. When the Tailor and I pulled in after one in the morning (an interesting quirk about Van Horn, TX: it’s lies about one mile inside the Central time zone, so we lost… More
On a missionMission San Juan Bautista, CA
Posted 11 years ago
Someday I’ll get to all 21 missions along El Camino Real, but for my first-ever mission visit, I had to choose a starting point. Who wouldn’t pick the one used in an Alfred Hitchcock film? And one starring Jimmy Stewart, no less! I mean, come on. Though you’d never know it from the sun and… More
Crack of dawnSan Juan Bautista, CA
Posted 11 years ago
Have sketchbook, will travelSalem Sue, New Salem, ND and Highway 1, near San Simeon, CA
Posted 11 years ago
You know when you’re on a road trip, and you see a highway billboard that says something like, “World’s Largest Two-Headed Calf, Exit Now!” and you consider stopping, just for a moment? And then your spouse looks it up on the map, and you discover that yeah, it’s this exit, plus maybe another 140 miles… More