Last October in Memphis at the Blues Guitar Unleashed (BGU) Live gathering, several of us jammers stayed at the Tom Sawyer Mississippi River Campground in West Memphis, Arkansas. Among that crew were Michael (known as Stringbreaker on the BGU forum) and his wife, Kat. Michael and Kat live in Moab and they told us we should stop by if we were ever passing through there. Ding ding ding!
Continue reading “Jamming with Stringbreaker”
This is our first visit to Utah canyon country, and likely not our last. It’s magical! And we’ve only just begun…
Southern Utah is beautiful! However, cell coverage and wifi are nearly as sparse here as palm trees in the high desert. It looks like we’ll be updating blog posts in batches, and perhaps adding photos/albums as we find bandwidth!
We were approached by another hiker who asked if it was our first time in Utah. Yes, yet how did he know? First timers tend to take an extraordinary number of photos. He was right! So, please excuse our (temporary?) hyperphotophilia. Our oversized albums are a small fraction of that extraordinary number…
We have arrived in Utah where we plan to stay for a bit and explore. The re-positioning portion of our trip is complete. We’re about to slow way down.
Our foray into New Mexico was actually another blues guitar visit. We’ve met my friend Steve twice before in real life, and he and I have been friends online through the BGU forum for several years. Steve told me, in a reply to a forum post I made last year in which I detailed the states we planned to visit, that there was a mistake in my list – I’d left out New Mexico. Well, to me that sounded pretty close to an invitation to visit the legendary Compound within which Steve and his lovely wife Hyacinth reside, and I vowed not to make that mistake again this year.
…bring interesting storms into eastern Colorado and New Mexico in the spring. So what are the options for a couple of adventurers in a 6 ton RV with 6 all-season tires (2 of them brand new!) heading through Taos and Santa Fe to Albuquerque, with a forecast for 12+ inches of snow?
We had a great visit last October with Mike & Tania, Doug’s cousin, in Franklin, TN. At that time, they declared that we must someday meet Mike’s brother Charles, since we had so much in common – biking, hiking, RV adventuring, etc. Toward than end, they provided a virtual introduction via email.
Regular readers may recall that last year took us through Colorado’s Front Range area, where we met up with my BGU brothers Chris and Frank for a drive-by blues jam. Well, that was so much fun that when the map for our trek to Utah began to take shape and quite naturally aimed itself for Denver, it was an easy decision to try for a repeat. An excellent time was had by all! More pictures below.
If we ever had any inclination to refer to the midwest as ‘flyover states’ (we didn’t), our travels last summer would have changed that. We thoroughly enjoyed exploring the northern midwest, finding the region surprisingly beautiful. (If you have any doubt, check our blog posts from summer 2016.) We were glad that our ‘straight line’ to Utah this year would include a different path through the middle of the midwest.
If you’ve never trusted your trip, vacation or summer to a computer algorithm, it’s worth a try. Key your destination into Google Maps, select ‘avoid highways’ and follow the mathematically optimized route that will take you places you’d never find on your own while avoiding difficult left turns and heavy traffic. Continue reading “Squirrel!”