Mid-week arrived during our planned sojourn across Oklahoma and Arkansas. After an exciting start, it was time for our yearly visit to the Buffalo National River in Arkansas. Bit of background before we get to 2021 …
Continue reading Ten Years Gone – Solo to the BuffaloContinuing what is now a yearly tradition, we looked for a way to get outdoors and away from DFW around the Fourth of July holiday. While this has generally involved herding various cats (read: children, adult and otherwise) towards Arkansas and the Buffalo River, we increasingly find that scheduling is complicated. Given schedules, we gave up on trying to include family members. We had both blocked the week off from work but with teenager work schedule, we decided to break up travel into two quick trips instead of spending the whole week out of town. This would allow for a few days in between to check on a teenager at home, keeping one of our party from fearing the worst depredations of unsupervised high-schoolers.
Continue reading Oklahoma Adventures and Redneck FireworksWe’ve spent a lot of time in Northern New Mexico – Taos, Santa Fe, Red River, Las Vegas, Cimmaron, Clayton, and everywhere in-between. While it’s beautiful there, we’ve always been curious about the mountains further south, so we arranged an extended weekend for exploration. The plan was to do the usual Colorado trip, then head south to explore the area around the Lincoln National Forest. It was time to break in one of the new cars as well and with a kid and relatively responsibility-free weekend, it didn’t seem right for the new Hyundai Kona to sit at home.
Continue reading South by NorthwestWaaaay too early …
First, some back story. In the far away year of 2016, while minding my own business and taking to co-workers on a drive back from the airport, my 2007 Kia Sorento got totaled when the driver of the giant Dodge Ram behind me on traffic-jam central (114W in rush hour traffic) decided that brakes weren’t a thing and plowed into my car. Not only did that wipe out the Sorento, but collateral damage was inflicted on my first really nice road bike – my 2012 Specialized Roubaix. Thanks …
From there, I scrounged enough couch change and lint to buy a burnished copper colored AWD Kia Sportage, which was the de facto transport for almost every driving trip since. 157000 miles and planned for 100000 more – had in fact just replaced struts and shocks and fixed a minor trim issue, given this was the car we’d be taking to New Mexico and beyond.
Continue reading We’re Going To Kansas City
… Or scoping out the future in a hurry
This was going to be a 48-hour round-trip for in-person viewing of potential properties in the northern New Mexico area. The first of what may be many trips to the northern New Mexico area with the goal of putting the noise, crappy climate, and congestion and insanity of Dallas / Fort Worth and north Texas behind us. We have a collective 3 decades or more of living here and it’s time for a change of scenery.
Not without complications, of course. Driving in and out in that time would leave us about 15 minutes to check out any potential listings. Our trip had to be packed into Saturday morning through Sunday evening, with as much of Saturday as possible devoted to the Taos and Rio Grande valley area. COVID had started to recede, but restrictions were still in place, and DFW <-> New Mexico flight routes were going to be a challenge.
Continue reading Taos In A Day Is A-OK… Or Taos Again?
Northern New Mexico has become our go-to escape hatch. After the humid flatlands of north central Texas for almost 20 years, the wide open vistas and mountains, dry air, and minimal population are like a cool drink of water. Not tired of it yet – will take a few (hundred) more trips to do that.
After a long, long, long year of camping out in home offices and generally avoiding the public, we managed to block a few days for skiing. We had patiently waited for New Mexico to move in and out of various phases of lockdown and quarantine requirements – we’d driven through but been unable to stop other than getting gas and coffee, and looking longingly at the southern end of the Rockies. As some sort of stability approached, our future home state began attempting to open up the resorts to revive the economy. Having been over a year since we last saw mountains and snow, excitement was high, tempered by the worry of navigating mask requirements and protocols.
Continue reading There’s Blood On Them Skis …We had 48 hours. Make a round trip to Atlanta, Georgia, from DFW, in a Sportage. Retrieve a very specific desk from IKEA, and make it back in one piece. Optionally, visit some new cities and squeeze in exercise while driving over 1600 miles.
Expanding on this a bit … after yearly relocations for the past several years, accompanied by downsizing in line with The More of Less, one of our party had finally hit the point where furniture consolidation dictated getting rid of the two desk combination from Container Store and IKEA. To replace the work desk and the music desk with one piece of furniture was going to require some inventive squeezing, and after a long search, IKEA won again with … FREDDE.
Continue reading Midnight Train to Georgia
graveyardsandghosttowns 