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Nature’s Rock Garden: Joshua Tree National Park
We arrived at Joshua Tree National Park a day earlier and left a week later than originally planned. That’s how excited we were to visit and how much we loved this National Park. We also needed more time because a few days were so windy we couldn’t leave the camper for fear it might blow away while we were gone. We had two very convenient home bases provided by the BLM, one 5 minutes from the southern entrance and one 20 minutes from the northern entrances of the park. Unlike the campgrounds inside which are so adorable that they sort of made us want to go tent camping again, these…
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More Arizona Desert Dwelling
With our wheels pointed in the general direction of Joshua Tree National Park in California, we decided to make two more stops in Arizona along the way. We split a week between two different locations near Gila Bend, a town without a grocery store. First, at the Painted Rock Petroglyph Site and Campground, managed by the BLM. For a “campground”, the amenities were sparse – only a vault toilet and dumpster, but with our interagency pass, it was a bargain at $4 per night. And, it’s an ancient archeological site with hundreds of petroglyphs! Petroglyphs (images etched on rocks) from ancient cultures are found all over the world. These particular…
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Ajo, AZ & Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument
From Tucson, we made our way further into the heart of the Sonoran Desert. We had some BLM boondocking land chosen a couple of miles south of the tiny town of Ajo, Arizona, on Darby Well Road. This location would put us within a half-hour drive to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Ajo, a former mining town, is surrounded by millions of acres of federal land (BLM, NPS, and the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge) and the tribal land of the Tohono O’odham Nation. And, what seemed like millions of Border Patrol agents. The area got even more scenic further down the road, which of course negatively correlated with cell…
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Tucson: Outdoor Edition
After leaving our newly beloved first boondocking site at Las Cienegas NCA, we circled the city of Tucson for a few weeks. I say circled because we never really went to the city. When you are in the world’s Covid-19 hotspot while it is the hotspot, you don’t take any chances. Urban streets and museums went unexplored. Breweries and restaurants remained not visited. However, we did not waste any opportunity to enjoy the area’s parks and trails. Or to spend time with all our new cactus friends. Frenemies? We started out in the Tucson Mountains west of the city at Gilbert Ray Campground, inside Pima County’s Tucson Mountain Park. It’s…
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Boondocking at Las Cienegas & The Empire Ranch
Since I am not going to write a blog specifically about the end of 2020, I will just say that the year left us heartbroken because our Golden, Nala, needed to be euthanized on December 22. She had a pathological fracture and several indications that it was caused by bone cancer on x-ray. It was all of the sudden and we miss her like crazy. Right after Christmas and 6 weeks of being in NC for the holidays, we beelined across the country, wanting to take advantage of Michael’s time off from work for long drive days. After 2000 miles, four parking lot sleeps, and completely traumatizing the cat, we…
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Bridges, Bays, & Beaches
When planning a route back to NC for the holidays, our goal must have been let’s see how many bridges we can take. And to visit Assateague Island National Seashore. We crossed the Rappahannock, the Potomac, and took the Bay Bridge (Highway 50 from Annapolis) to the Delmarva Peninsula. Delmarva is an acronym for Delaware and the Eastern Shores of Maryland and Virginia. Our first stop was our first Harvest Hosts location – Outstanding Dreams Alpaca Farm. I had been wanting to use Harvest Hosts since we first started RVing in 2017. It is an agrotourism program that gives RVers a free alternative to spend the night and an extra…
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Fall In The Northern Neck
By mid-September, we were starting to feel like locals. We had our preferred grocery store and could get there without using GPS. Even Michael was starting to be able to identify all the invasive plants because I pointed them out along the roadside everywhere we went. The weather was more enjoyable and there was an explosion of yellow with all the Tickseed, Crownbeard, and Golden Rod blooming. On the Refuge, my main tasks were new ones – mowing (not just mowing, but also driving the mower around) and water sealing a massive amount of woodwork at the most visited tract with John and Ivy. Lauren and I also started doing…
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Summer In The Northern Neck
Yeah, we had never heard of it either. However, this peninsula, bordered by the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers in northeastern VA is a great example of the kinds of new places that we hope to get to know during our US travels. We arrived at the beginning of August and were welcomed by Hurricane Isaias. Thank you, 2020, for continuing to induce anxiety about our decision to live in a structure not secured to the ground. Our NOAA weather radio (I knew we would need one of those) waking and alerting us that we needed to seek shelter from a tornado in the area. Our home…
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Virginia Is For Lovers
The ad agency that created Virginia’s iconic tourism slogan claims its origin is that regardless of what you love – mountains, beaches, history – there is somewhere for you to visit in the state. I also like the theory that the slogan references a landmark civil rights case, Loving v Virginia, that legalized interracial marriage in the Commonwealth shortly before the slogan first appeared. We happen to love Virginia State Parks, at least compared to NC State Parks, which is our current frame of reference. Our absolute favorite is Grayson Highlands in the Virginia Blue Ridge where we have camped and hiked multiple times. On our way to the NWR…
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Two False Starts
Maybe the blog should be renamed Mary and Michael MISadventures?!? We officially moved into our motorhome on March 1st, 2020. The same week that the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic arrived in NC and became a lot more real (to us). Our original plans were to be with family in Western NC for a couple of weeks before heading to Charlottesville, VA to celebrate our friend’s Ph.D. defense along with other friends that were going to visit from California. Michael’s parents were also going to visit for a weekend of Shenandoah hiking. We would then head to the Outer Banks where I would be volunteering at Cape Hatteras Natl Seashore until mid-July. But…
