As jubilados (Spanish for retirees) we value relationships, old and new
Chicken? Not our taste, though many find it “eggs-ellent.” Instead, we flocked off down Alaska’s Taylor Highway for seventeen miles to a camp spot more natural, more scenic. To Milepost 49, on the Dennison Fork of the Fortymile Wild Scenic River, to West Fork Campsite.
There’s nowhere quite like Røros anywhere in Scandinavia, perhaps even anywhere in the world. (David Nikel, MOON’s Norway.)
Yes indeed, David. For reasons you mention—and more, many more.
Look at this, Magellan says more frequently during COVID, calling me to his computer screen to see the latest camping equipment he’s discovered. Not a better shower or a brighter lantern. It’s big-ticket items. Like a Defender. Pulling a Conqueror UEV-490 trailer, engineered and built in Australia. It is the Swiss Army Knife of off-road trailers. Pretty wow all right. I remind him how well Rove-Inn (mostly) performed on our two-month trip to the southwestern United States. Remember that night in Monarch Canyon Magellan asks, reminding me of being startled awake by Death Valley’s ferocious winds slapping at our canvas Airtop bed in the Funeral Mountains near Hell’s Gate. For half an hour we held down the slats to prevent the wind from whipping our bedroom off to the land of oz. Diverting his dream of a new unit, I remind him we haven’t posted a story on Monarch Canyon and its engineering marvel, an abandoned gold mine.
For thousands of years the serrated peaks of Montserrat have been a sacred destination for pilgrims exploring their interior mountains and climbers scaling jagged peaks. Being neither pilgrims nor climbers, we simply wanted to see the Benedictine Abbey and hike in the national park. We didn’t know that Montserrat is the home of Sister Teresa Forcades, Spain’s most famous nun, her name usually preceded by the word “radical.”
“We went in the early 90s,” my sister Joyce said. “Twice. I remember the ocean views and the gorgeous beach, the ruins and the single road. It wasn’t that busy, maybe forty people walking around. I don’t remember seeing any restaurants or hotels.”
Tulum blinked on our radar in the 80s. But our bare feet didn’t touch its white sands until January of 2017 when Magellan said, “Let’s get out of this dismal rain and go somewhere warm for a week.” It took us almost that long to decide where to stay.
Suppose your father was Ray Stanton Avery who, with $100 borrowed from his future wife and machinery he developed, created the world’s first self-adhesive label, made multimillions and you, his son Dennis, inherited a bundle: What would you do with your wealth?
Magellan and I were in Borrego Springs, California, for the Super Bloom—a profusion of wild flowers: desert sunflowers, purple sand verbena, white evening primrose, magenta cactus blooms. Stunning, their glory days brightening the desert—two weeks before we arrived. What else was there to see? Galleta Meadows, the fortuitous collaboration of Dennis Avery and Ricardo Breceda.