Question for the audience: if someone is writing about this past winter and it is already April, does that imply a) low motivation, b) a lackadaisical lifestyle, or c) a highly enriched brilliant mind. I think we can confidently rule out one of these. For anyone breathing and located anywhere in North America, I think… Read More Winter of ’25/’26 – Apr 2026
I wasn’t going to do a year-in-review post this year, because no one ever reads these posts. Well, besides me. I suffer from a medical malady called CRS, so these posts do a yeoman’s job of summarizing our debacles during the previous twelve months. My guess is we stuck our toes in about 25-30 states… Read More 2025 in Review – Dec 2025
It’s been a few months since we were on the road, and waking up in our trailer is always awesome. In the hazy mist of dreams our first night, for some reason I was thinking of Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. What do you mean I’m funny. Funny how? I mean, like a clown? I amuse… Read More Franconia Notch – Sept 2025
Two of our kids, Child Units 2A and 2B, were in town this week, so we chartered Captain Bob’s Lobster Tour out of Hampton Harbor (NH) to go see what lobstering really looks like. This was SO cool! We know our way around eating a lobster and have probably eaten more than is healthy over… Read More Captain Bob’s Lobster Tour – Aug 2025
Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle I want to ride my bicycle, bicycle, bicycle I want to ride my bicycle I want to ride my bike I want to ride my bicycle I want to ride my bicycle, races are coming your way (Queen) We participated in the Bikes and Beers Hampton bicycle ride, a 15, 30, or… Read More Bikes and Beers Hampton – Aug 2025
As has been tradition (we are not ones to hold with tradition), once again we post a summary of our past summer. Now keep in mind that this is less about informing you as it is in reminding ourselves what we have been up to. Maybe I should do a post on where I left… Read More Summer of ’24 – Sept 2024
Setting out on the Utopia, a small charter boat, we got to visit the newly opened Wood Island Life Saving Station sitting at the mouth of the Piscataqua River and the entrance to the Portsmouth Harbor off Kittery Point, Maine. With Captain Rick (a 26-year Coast Guard retiree) and his able assistant Beatrice, we motored… Read More Wood Island Life Saving Station – Aug 2024
We have now crossed another hurdle in our lives – we participated in a parks and recreation event, replete with bus transportation, and clearly intended for a “mature” crowd; our lives are spiraling before our eyes. We are now the ones on the bus, not the ones watching the bus. We had a fantastic time! … Read More Isles of Shoals – Aug 2024
I had the opportunity on Friday to watch the Tall Ships parade into Portsmouth (NH) Harbor – such a cool event! This was the opening event for the Sail Portsmouth weekend, one of the busiest weekends in Portsmouth for the summer. And Portsmouth is such a cool town. The ships included the US Coast Guard… Read More Tall Ships Parade Portsmouth – July 2024
Happy New Year! Nothing like starting out the year with some severe weather!. Pretty much the entire country has seen some crazy weather since the start of the year, and nothing here in New Hampshire compares to some of the devastation that happened in the Florida panhandle and other places because of tornados. The weather… Read More Hampton (NH) Weather – Jan 2024
As happens every year at this time, I sit down to recap the year, and I think to myself, what the hell did we do? If this didn’t happen to me every year, I might think I was losing my mind. It could be the horse is already out of the barn. Karen had her… Read More 2023 in Review – Dec 2023
September is the quintessential month for camping. Is it because the air is dry, the temperatures are cool, and the leaves are starting to turn? No. It’s because young families are home buying school supplies, taking kids to soccer, and fighting virulent diseases in daycare centers. That leaves us old, cranky misanthropes to scour the… Read More White Mountains of NH – Sept 2023
For the three of you who read this blog, I’ll bet you’ve missed us! Wait, you haven’t? I know it has been a while since we last communicated with you, but it hasn’t been for a lack of love. I thought to myself… do we even have anything interesting to write about? And then I… Read More Summer of ’23 – Aug 2023
Greetings from the great white north (Eh, Hoser?). We have successfully endured our first full winter in the Live Free or Die state of New Hampshire – no worse for the wear. We sold our home in Georgia back in October, and then wandered cross-country until in December we moved full-time into our 800 square… Read More Winter in New England – Apr 2023
I maintain there is little more powerful than weather. And the ocean is almost always humbling. Add weather like we have all had, an astronomical high tide, and you’ve got, not to make lightly, the perfect storm. Like it has for just about everybody in America, the last few days have represented some crazy weather… Read More Seacoast: Add Weather – Dec 2022
Intuitively, I know we had a great year this past year. But, as always, it is not until I go back through our journals that I recognize just how beautiful, complex, and in some areas stressful it was. I know many of you are expecting the crème de la crème this year to be our… Read More 2022 in Review – Dec 2022
If for some reason you are headed west from New England on I-90 and I-80 towards Denver, this post might be mildly interesting. If not, don’t say I didn’t warn you. We are spending most of our time on this part of our trip on interstate highways, which is not our usual MO. We are headed… Read More Heading West – Aug 2022
It feels odd to be summarizing the summer of 2022 on the first day of August, but we head west in just days. Think Lewis and Clark meets Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, perhaps absent the enlightenment. The route below will not exactly be our route, but we won’t burden you with details. … Read More Summer of ’22 – Aug 2022
Perhaps no one could choose a less likely activity for me on a beautiful sunny summer Saturday than to go explore gardens in people’s yards. When it comes to plants, I have been proven ignorant, unimaginative, and deadly. Plants consider our yard like hospice. So we ignored our own experience and enjoyed others! This was… Read More Pocket Gardens of Portsmouth – June 2022
We think nothing of traveling hundreds, if not thousands of miles to see beauty, interesting places, or random quirkiness. Sometimes beauty is right in your back yard, so to speak. This weekend, we walked about ½ mile down North Shore Road (and a little bit of Ancient Highway) towards the beach in our fair town… Read More North Shore Road – May 2022
Mind you – I am not a weatherman, but I have played a weatherman, so I am certainly a credible witness to this weather event. Prior to the storm’s arrival, the weather people were reporting that NYC would receive anywhere between 0 inches and 3 feet of snow. So really, how accurate do I need… Read More Blizzard of ’22 – Jan 2022
We don’t write a year-in-review post every year, but when we do, I always start by thinking, what the hell did we even do this past year? And after going through our pictures, I’m like – wow – we did a bunch! Of course, this is not an historical world view of 2021 – just… Read More 2021 in Review – Dec 2021
We travel 1,200 miles to get out of town, and who follows us? Our neighbors! Stalkers. And where does it go from there? Do they think we want to go out and see beautiful sights, eat lobster, shuck oysters and eat fresh seafood with them? I mean, what’s next. Seriously, we were delighted to have… Read More Out of Town Guests – Sept 2021
The surf on the NH coast has been up for the last two days as a result of some offshore storms, so I took my camera out to catch some of the sights. All of these pictures are from either Hampton, North Hampton or Rye. A few pictures are taken from the end of our… Read More Surf’s Up NH! – Sept 2021
Good morning, class. Good morning, class. Class? Class!? SHUT UP! Thank you. Now Sister Rosetta has informed me that your assignment for the last two months has been to write an essay entitled How I Spent My Summer Vacation. Who would like to read theirs before the class? Young man in the front row, please… Read More Summer of ’21
RUN! Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water… our kids found us! We have moved three times in the last few years, but they keep tracking us down! Next step… Witness Protection. We had Child Unit 1, Child Unit 2, and their significant others here at the cottage… Read More Invasion of the Child Units! – Aug 2021
2020 has been the worst year ever – right? Watching 2020 unfold was like watching porn. First it was titillating, then it felt unseemly, and lastly you got a sinking feeling in the pit in your stomach like you get two minutes after wolfing down a quarter pounder and large fry. No happy ending, so… Read More 2020 in Review – Dec 2020
I have posted several “heading west” blog posts over the years. But the truth of the matter is that if you live on the east coast, you inevitably need to, well, head west. I suppose you could go north or south, but really – who does that. Crazy talk. We headed west from New Hampshire… Read More Heading West – Sept 2020
You had to know I would be the one to point out there are meteorological and astronomical ends of summer. “How do you come up with this shit” should your first thought. The mind works in curious ways. So yes, this is the end of the meteorological summer – the 3 months of June, July… Read More End of the Meteorological Summer – Aug 2020
This may be a lot about naught. We are, after all, largely in shutdown mode. Being retired as we are, we have nothing to complain about, given all the unemployment, health, emotional and psychological tolls, and the myriad of issues young families face. But if you wanted to be depressed, you’d simply turn on the… Read More Summer Sequester – Aug 2020