July 12, 2025 – The Ten Most Memorable Experiences from our RV Travels

Not able to get back on the road until August, Vivian and I take refuge from the outdoor inferno in our spacious and comfortable apartment. Consequently, I have more time to reflect on our past travels. To that end, I’ve come up with the ten most memorable experiences from our RV travels between 2018 and 2025.

These are not all pleasant memories, and in fact, four on the list are events that I would not want to relive. Yet each one made our RV experience richer, tested our resilience, and perhaps somehow benefited us in the long run. Five on the list are memories of special places of extraordinary beauty and uniqueness, but also it is about my experiences through the camera. And last, although we have had many history lessons on the road, one of them stood out to us as something that happened decades ago but now more than ever, resonates deeply in this country.

I’ve listed ten previous blogs and their links below. You may have read them before (and most likely have forgotten them), but several have been rewritten. So, please take a look and as always, lots of photos to go with the story.

Here they are, the 10 most memorable places or events from our RV travels…so far.

Jul 28, 2018 – Putting Our Home in Motion

After several hours of white-knuckle driving through torrential rain, we arrived at Lake Rousseau in time to sip our wine and watch the sunset reflect colorfully on the soothing water. The tension and anxiety of the day melted away with the storm clouds that rolled into the distance, leaving behind a languid air heavy with humidity. The evening laid out so sweetly that it was hard to imagine several hours ago we had almost given up on this dream.

Sep 9, 2019 – Breaking from Normal

After months on the road, the next phase of our travels began with great anticipation for one thing, to fulfill Vivian’s dream of fly fishing on the White River in Arkansas. But that ended just as quickly as it began. Vivian would not be fishing, not for a while.

Jul 2, 2020 – Land of Stone and Light

In a blink of an eye, we were transported to a completely different world; a place so strangely beautiful that words must have been created just to describe it, a land that inspired Frank Lloyd Wright to ask, “How is it that we, toward the Atlantic, have heard so much about the Grand Canyon and so little of this, when this is so much more miraculous?” We were entering the ‘land of stone and light’.

May 12, 2021 – O’Keeffe’s Faraway Place

Vivian and I explored northern New Mexico through the eyes of Georgia O’Keeffe, and no doubt her art has brought many people here who seek out a visceral connection to the desert that inspired her art. After several days in O’Keeffe country, I came to the realization that it was not O’Keeffe, but the high desert of northern New Mexico that inspired me to develop my own visual language with my camera.

Jul 27, 2021 – All the Pretty Horses

The early morning silence was mesmerizing as I quietly stalked the horses from a safe distance to find a clear view of the small herd. Standing still with camera in hand, the only sounds were the rapid clicks of the camera’s shutter. This went on for a couple hours. That is, until I heard the deep and alarmingly close bellow of a bison.

Aug 25, 2021 – Full of Grace

With what could only be divine intervention, the voice over the phone replied to my desperate request, “Actually, your campsite just became available. You can arrive two weeks earlier if you like.” With that phone call, my mind was no longer in Glacier National Park where we were parked for several days. Instead, I was 1600 miles away in Michigan where we needed to be sooner than later.

Oct 20, 2021 – Lessons from Alabama

On October 20, 2021, we parked the truck in downtown Selma and walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the same direction as that of the marchers on March 7, 1965. As Vivian and I crested the top of the bridge and continued to the other side, we tried to envision what those marchers saw waiting for them on the other side of the bridge, a column of state troopers and local volunteer officers of the sheriff’s department blocking their path.

Aug 3, 2023 – Jasper National Park Part 1 – The Icefields

The Columbia Icefield has an impressive role to play as a hydrological apex (Snow Dome) of the Continental Divide. This is where a drop of meltwater begins its journey to one of three oceans. If a water droplet manages to roll down the west side, it enters the Columbia River and eventually the Pacific Ocean. From the east side water rolls down to the North Saskatchewan and Athabasca Rivers and eventually to the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, respectively.

Sep 25, 2023 – A Bad Thing Happened in Oklahoma

Eager to get to the preserve, we were out the door before the crack of dawn. Inside the boundaries of the refuge and feeling like we were the only people within miles, we drove east on a narrow park road toward the rising sun. Curves and upslopes reminded me to go slow; after all, large mammals roam this refuge – bison, elk, longhorn cattle, and white-tailed deer. And then within a split second, our plans were altered from that point on.

Jul 20, 2025 – Ancient Travelers to Newfoundland

As soon as we arrived at Twillingate, we began our search along the peninsula’s coastline. Vivian drove so I could keep my eyes peeled. Not long after leaving the campground, we came upon a street entrance that continued a quarter mile before meeting the water. As we slowly passed by, I looked in its direction, and within a fleeting second spotted a very large ghostly object in the shape of a wizard’s hat at the end of the street. it was unusually tall, framed by smaller 1-story modest homes, power poles and vehicles.