After reading yesterday’s blog, several readers e-mailed me to ask about the fate of the injured coyote I wrote about. I don’t know because when I went out back to look yesterday, I could not find it. I hope it has succumbed to its injuries and is not lying out there in the woods suffering. […]
In a blog post titled Speeding last week I wrote that when I was stationed at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York during my Army days, my parents lived in Toledo, Ohio, and at least once a month during our slow time when we were not training cadets, I would jump in […]
You may think I’m just a chubby little guy who spends my days writing stories about cops and criminals, but you might be surprised to learn that I have a criminal past of my own. That’s right, I’ve spent some time in jail. For part of my time in the Army I was a firearms […]
Standing regally on a point of land at the entrance to Ohio’s Sandusky Bay, Marblehead Lighthouse has guided ships and sailors safely along the rocky shoreline of Lake Erie for nearly 185 years. Noted for its beauty by artists and photographers, this grand old structure is the oldest continuously operating lighthouse on the Great Lakes, […]
“A better man cannot be.” Those are the words Thomas Jefferson used to describe James Monroe in 1785, and most scholars of our country’s fifth president would probably agree. Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia in 1758, Monroe attended the College of William and Mary for a year before dropping out to join the Continental Army, […]
Note: This story is from my book Highway History And Back Road Mystery. The Old West was populated by a remarkably colorful collection of adventurers, dreamers, rebels, and misfits. It took men and women of outlandish character to be willing to explore new lands, endure the hardships that accompanied pioneer life, and survive under conditions […]
Note: This story is from the January-February, 2011 issue of the Gypsy Journal. On a narrow two lane back road in Gloucester County, Virginia, we discovered the tiny cottage in which one of the most famous medical doctors of all time was born and spent his earliest days. A small sign and historical plaque were […]
Note: This story is from the November-December, 2011 issue of the Gypsy Journal. The wild Dakota Territory left a mark on the young Theodore Roosevelt, who would become the 26th President of the United States, and there is no doubt that the man left his own mark on the land. Roosevelt, a lifelong outdoorsman, came […]
We love exploring America’s back roads and small towns and finding overlooked gems that the tourist brochures never cover. In a series of weekly blog posts we will be sharing some of America’s lesser-known small town museums, historic sites, and oddball attractions, on a state-by-state basis. We don’t have room to cover each and every […]
I love music and I love traveling, and sometimes I think one influences the other. I’ve wanted to see old Cape Cod from the first time I heard Patti Page sing about it. I was a kid living in El Paso, Texas the first time I heard Marty Robbins singing his now classic song about […]
After suffering intolerably for way too long, today we’re going to scratch our hitch itch, at least a little bit. We’re off on a road trip to historic Hubbell Trading Post and Canyon de Chelly National Monument, on the Navajo Indian Reservation in far northeastern Arizona. This is familiar country to anybody who has ever […]
One of the great things about the RV lifestyle is having the opportunity to eat so many different kinds of food in so many different places. Whenever we can, we pass up the chain restaurants in favor of the local fare. Let’s face it, a Grand Slam breakfast is going to taste the same, whether […]
The rain stopped long enough yesterday for us to enjoy mostly blue sky, but the temperature dropped quite a bit, and the next week or so is supposed to be much cooler. I won’t complain about that, it’s still better than we had in Indiana. Now I wish it would just dry out! I have […]