The weekend found us planning this year’s big road trip, a sojourn through the Southwest to White Sands, Saguaro and Joshua Tree national parks. White Sands National Park, located in New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin, was originally designated a national monument by President Herbert Hoover in 1933. It was redesignated a national park by President Donald…
Our typical weekend activities served as “bookends” to our Saturday spotlight event: a visit from our friend John for cocktails, dinner, campfire conversation, and a celebration of Armed Forces Day, an observance established in 1949 by President Harry S. Truman as a single-day celebration for all five branches of the U.S. military. Because John served…
When we cancelled our annual Thanksgiving trip to visit Jon’s family in Illinois, we promised his mom that if we all were vaccinated, we would visit instead on Mother’s Day weekend. We kept our promise. We started our trip to the St. Louis area on Thursday morning, arriving at Joplin, Missouri, our overnight destination, after…
An article by Catherine Zuckerman in The New York Times got it right. “Raise your hand if you’re completely burned out,” it began. “Your inbox is an overflowing bucket of urgent requests. You are consistently asked to do more with less. Your mind is constantly reshuffling priorities, perpetually calculating the number of minutes left in…
We entered our weekend through a narrow opening in the window of opportunity. After a full day of spring showers, we had just enough of a break in the weather to get hitched up and travel to our campsite at Loyd Park. Almost immediately after parking, however, a torrential rain thoroughly soaked our site, sending…
We set out for Cedar Hill State Park for Jon’s birthday weekend, which started out wet and muddy following days of drenching rains. Our campsite was in the Lakeview area, so named because at the time of the park’s development it likely had views of the lake. Not today, however. In fact, we were hard-pressed…
After watching a segment about St. Elmo Steak House on CBS This Morning Saturday, we decided to purchase a gift box that included the restaurant’s spicy cocktail sauce, steak sauce and seasoning, and creamy horseradish. The box arrived from Indianapolis just in time to kick-start our weekend. And one taste of the shrimp cocktail sauce…
A hog wallow is a shallow depression in land denuded of vegetation made by the wallowing of swine. As luck would have it, Hog Wallow was the only camping area at Cedar Hill State Park with an available site on Easter weekend. Despite the foreboding name, we took a chance that there would be neither…
After spending some time at home replacing all the plants and shrubs that were destroyed by the February winter storm, we returned to Cedar Hill State Park for an ideal weekend filled with the sights and sounds of spring. Our only regret was that a gazillion other people had the same idea. All the surrounding…
The call from Loyd Park came as a welcome surprise: We had a site for the weekend. Because it was the first weekend of Spring Break, we were unable to reserve a site at Cedar Hill State Park, so we were happy to return to Loyd Park for the first time since November. Our site…
