Reading Time: < 1 minute I finally had an encounter with a tick. But as I would find out later, that was the least of my problems. I’m in Carlyle, Illinois at the Centerstone Inn, situated near a McDonalds, a Walmart, and a recreational lake area. I was eating lunch at the desk in my motel room and noticed the tick […]
Reading Time: 2 minutes Years ago, I developed a theory of decision making. It was probably created during a time I was writing lyrics, since it rhymes. Here it is (if you use it, please credit me): “The more difficult a decision is to make, the less important it is which alternative you take.” (Robert Schoen) In the last […]
Reading Time: 2 minutes I’d only been awake for a half hour this morning when the rain began. It didn’t last long, but now I had to deal with a wet tent (fortunately I’d put on the rain fly). Oh, well, not a big deal. Campers have been dealing with this forever. It’s just that I haven’t—I’m a relative […]
Reading Time: 2 minutes I’d planned to spend tonight in my tent in a “primitive” campsite in Klondike Park in Augusta, Missouri. After climbing a steep hill to Klondike Park, I was dismayed to find that every last tent site in the park had been reserved for the weekend, including the so-called “primitive” sites (which were all numbered, and […]
Reading Time: 2 minutes I was up at 5:30 am and relaxed in the tent for a while. It hadn’t rained, but the sky was overcast (more about that in a minute). I had breakfast in the tent and broke camp at 7:30. Getting on the highway toward McKittrick I took a different exit from the park than I’d […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute We had quite a thunderstorm in the early morning hours. As I walked, the sky remained cloudy and gray. For some reason, I was tired when the day began, and I remained anxious as to where I’d be staying tonight. In the end, I walked to Hermann, where I had more options. Although the main […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute Last night in the dorm with five adults “of a certain age” was just what one might expect (someone was always getting up to use the restroom). But it was nice to not be alone in such an enormous space. Back on the Katy Trail today, I had the odd experience of being recognized by strangers, […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute During the summer of 1974 when I was in grad school at Cal, I attended my 10 year Wantagh High School reunion in New York. Instead of flying home to California, I took a bus to Montreal and then rode the Canadian National Railroad to Vancouver. It was an unforgettable trip. It was in Vancouver […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute I dreaded dealing with the treacherous stretch of Hwy 50 I‘d be facing this morning, with its broken, narrow pavement and heavy traffic. So when I checked in yesterday I asked the man at the front desk of the Twin Pine Motel if he (or someone) could give me a ride past the stretch. He […]
Reading Time: 2 minutes I was pleasantly surprised this morning when I arrived at a lovely portion of Hwy 50. This section of the road was dedicated as “Scott Joplin Memorial Highway” in 2016. According to his biography, “In 1894, Joplin moved to Sedalia, Missouri, where he played at local social clubs and where he began composing music.” He seems […]