Charming Adventures

Nashville, TN: Music City, USA

Everyone knows that Nashville is the long-time capital of country music. It also seems to be the home of 90% of the bachelorette parties in the USA. Every three minutes, an open deck party bus or a pedal-powered mobile bar slides by, with drunk girls in shredded short-shorts and knee-high cowboys boots hootin’ and hollerin’ to the music, which is...

Morrilton, AR: Petit Jean State Park

We left the tornado devastation of Sulphur, OK and drove as fast and far away as we could, meaning 325 miles to Petit Jean State Park in Arkansas. Soooo glad to be here, for sooooo many reasons. Its funny name has a romantic origin. Local legend has it that during the 18th century, the lovely Adrienne DuMont was refused the opportunity to travel with her French...

Sulphur, OK: We Survived A Tornado

We cruised east on Route 66 from New Mexico to Oklahoma, where interesting things were followed by scary things. Terrifying things. Heart-wrenchingly bad things. “Can’t fight Mother Nature” things. But more on that later…. We’ll start with cheery and cheeky things we saw and did along the road to Sulphur. Erick, Oklahoma is the home of...

Pie Town, NM: As American As Apple Pie

Because it’s impossible to be sad with pie in your mouth, the first stop of our 2024 Summer Trip was in Pie Town, New Mexico. That’s right, I said Pie Town! Obviously, any great American Road Trip is all about the local food you find along the way. This tiny town of 200 people has a big following, having been featured in Smithsonian Magazine, on CBS...

Enjoying America’s National Parks: The Gift of A Lifetime

Hey hey, National Parks Week is coming! #NationalParkWeek starts April 20, the day on which entrance fees will be waived at all parks to get the par-tay going and encourage everyone to enjoy their national parks in person. Most people are familiar with the most popular parks – Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Great Smoky Mountains — but did you know there are 63...

Wickenburg, AZ: Party in the Desert

It was time to (literally) dust off our cowboy hats and locate the pointy toe boots in the back of the closet. We attended a wonderful, down-home-style country music festival in Wickenburg, Arizona this past weekend. It was perfectly monikered as “Party in the Desert.” Yee-haw! The organizers put together the kind of gathering you’d want if you were...

Tubac, AZ: The Poor Man’s Santa Fe

We journeyed to far southern Arizona, indeed just 30 miles shy of the Mexican border, to explore Tubac AZ, founded 1752, a historic/bohemian/artsy community “where art and history meet” but which we prompted re-tagged as “The Poor Man’s Santa Fe.” Here we attended the Tubac Festival of the Arts, southern Arizona’s largest art fair...

McDowell Mountains Regional Park, AZ

We haven’t traveled in the RV since we returned from the Eastern Sierras of California in September, 2023. During that drought, we’ve been downsizing my 82-year-old parents from a huge house located an hour away, to a reasonably-sized house in our very own neighborhood. So, after the move was successfully completed, it was time for our first outing of...

8 Places to Love for National Recycling Day!

November 15 is National Recycling Day, and so we’ve “recycled” a few older blog posts to tell you all about the best, most-fun, clearly mind-blowing destinations highlighting recycled materials … and you can visit them all! According to National Geographic, Americans send 64 tons of waste to landfills during their lifetime.  Not these...

Eastern Sierras, CA: The Real Unreal

After every long trip, people inevitably ask, “What was your favorite stop?” Well, folks, in twenty-seven stops of Summer 2023, THIS was our favorite! Along the Eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada mountains, a 54-mile stretch of Highway 395 between Bridgeport and Mammoth Lakes is truly unreal … but it’s real!! Here are just a few of our favorite...