Thataway Road

Morningsong, the reason for the road

2011-04-14T07:48:00.000-07:00

Morning is God's way of gently shaking me awake with a smile and saying, "Get up, knothead. You're not finished yet."

I love mornings, by God. Always have. And by morning I mean a half hour or so before dawn. It's the grand reawakening of my little corner of the world. Sunrise, birds, the dew; the works.

Sunrise outside my home in Southern California is always spectacular. Sunrise everywhere is spectacular, amid mountains, deserts and seascapes. Even urban alleys and poor, blighted neighborhoods are washed by a hopeful light at dawn regardless of weather and transitory human circumstance.

A new day. A thing of beauty and grace.

I'll turn 60 in a few months. Though I've missed a few along the way I estimate I have had the thrill of experiencing nearly 20-thousand sunrises so far. I don't mean to be greedy but I'd sure like to see a few thousand more.

And, isn't there something extra special about a sunrise on the open road, away from home?

Whether holed up in a cheap motel, staying with family or, best of all, waking up in my RV in some exciting new place, daybreak feels like the Christmas mornings of my childhood: promises of wonder in yet unopened gifts.

I'll take mornings wherever I find them.

I'm not finished yet.

Spontaneous travel; flying on the wings of a whim

2011-03-29T19:17:00.000-07:00

There is nothing in life more exciting than impulsive action.

It's that phone call you get on a dull Saturday afternoon from a good friend directing you to "grab a toothbrush and a clean shirt, we're headed to Tahoe to raise a little hell!"

It's deciding to call a few people and tell them to come on over right now because you're going to grill some meat and make some margaritas.

It's deciding to go east instead of north.

When our boys were still young Carolann and I took them on a cruise. That's a pretty exciting vacation for an eight and twelve year-old. But when we returned to port in Los Angeles after a week of great food and fun on the Mexican Riviera the letdown was palpable in all of us. We were happy, just not ready to end the vacation. Not quite. So, rather than drive straight home to Sacramento as planned we decided to stay an extra night and take the boys to Disneyland as long as we were in Southern California anyway.

Off we went!

That evening in our motel room, as we tucked our happy, tired boys into bed, that letdown feeling started to return. I picked up a map and looked at it for a couple of minutes.

"You know," I told my wife, "the Grand Canyon is only four hundred miles from here." And that's where we spent the next night.

Carolann and I have done this many times. We're great vacationers. We're just not good at ending them.

Once we were sitting in the Honolulu airport waiting to board our return flight. When the announcement came that the flight would be delayed we took it as an omen, blew off the reservation, phoned work and told them I'd need another couple of days and then we left the airport for another day and evening in paradise.

Another time it was a two-week driving vacation in our Lance truck camper that took us to Idaho, then north to the fabulous Canadian Rockies and from there to Vancouver. On schedule to return home in time for me to get back to work in two days, we suddenly headed west before turning south because driving the Washington, Oregon and California coastline is so much nicer than I-5. And it added a few impulse days to our vacation.

The luxury of spontaneity is in throwing out schedules. It is reminding yourself that you are free to do as you please whenever you wish.

It has been too long. I'm ready to do something impulsive again. The problem is, you can't plan to be spontaneous. Or, can you?

Do you give in to your whims of adventure?

Tell me your tales. They inspire me.

Copyright © 2011, Dave Williams. All rights reserved.

In search of solitude with full hookups

2011-03-23T15:44:00.000-07:00

People in campgrounds and RV parks must think I'm weird, at least. Maybe even scary. They've got to be suspicious. I'm pretty sure they warn their kids to stay away from me.

I arrive alone, hook up to the power and water, and then I disappear inside my camper for days. It's a 1994 Lance. It has no slideouts. It does have an awning but I don't crank it open or put out camp chairs or fishing tackle. I don't set up a grill, lanterns, a pile of firewood or any other indications that a campsite is occupied and intended to be enjoyed.

Most suspiciously, I am alone. I just plug in and disappear.

Occasionally I emerge from my cave to haul trash bags to the dumpster, though I tend to do that late at night just before I go to bed. My neighbors don't usually see that solitary indication of normal human life from my campsite. Just as well. They'd wonder what I'm doing in there, creating trash but exhibiting no other signs of normal, RV park life.

Me and my late road buddy, Wiley

When I bring one of our dogs I walk her, of course, but I don't bring her very often because she's a distraction. (I'm pretty sure the dog thinks I'm no barrel-of-monkeys fun, either.)

All I want is to plug in, level the camper and be left alone.

What must the neighbors think?

I'm a writer in a truck camper, that's all. I only require electricity, water and solitude. I can do without water if necessary.

I have written three full-length award-winning plays, dozens of blogs, hundreds of pages of my personal travelogue and half of two novels in my Lance camper by just bearing down and getting into that blessed writer's "zone" for three or four days at a time. Home is just too distracting, with its ringing phones and knocking doors. I adore my wife more than life, itself, but in her company at home or on the road I can't seem to write more than a few hundred words are which thoroughly detached from my heart. It's a left-brain, right-brain thing, I guess.

Bodega Bay, writing Maternal Instincts

Going away and writing for a few days makes me a happier, stronger, healthier husband, dad and grandpa. It makes me a better man.

And that has nothing to do with writing. It's just about finding yourself in solitude, and learning that you like who you are.

So...who are you? And why do you go off RVing alone?

Copyright © 2011, Dave Williams. All rights reserved.

Ansel Adams would be shocked

2011-03-15T17:46:00.001-07:00

I swear. We crack me up.

The American Dream is to buy our own home. Once we succeed we look for every opportunity to get away from it all, our manicured yards and picket fences, our TiVoed HDTVs and our adjustable beds. Now we want to sleep on the ground in the dirt in a congested public campground; to hide our food in bear boxes and eat the mysterious stuff we hesitantly fish out of our cold, milky, ice chest goo.

And, like lemmings, we all want to do this every summer. We want to go away alone together at the same time every year.

We really, really do.

This morning I sprang from my bed at 6 a.m., fed the dogs and took them outside. While Cricket and Ladybug performed their morning ablutions I kept an anxious eye on the clock. I brewed my coffee and fixed my darling Carolann's morning fru-fru hot apple cider and cinnamon drink. At 6:45 I crept back into our bedroom, steaming crystal mug of whipped cream and caramel syrup in hand, and gently, yet urgently, invited her to join me at our phone bank.

Like every breathlessly anticipated Christmas morning of my life, Campground Reservation morning had arrived!

This summer our family and friends decided we should all go to Yosemite National Park for our annual camping trip. Sure, it's crowded there in August and yeah, we know we'll be competing for reservations with people from, literally, all around the world. But Yosemite is barely a hop, skip and four-hour drive from here. How difficult can this be? How long can it take to secure four campsites in Yosemite Valley?

Apparently, it may take a lifetime.

The U.S. National Park campgrounds reservations phone line opens at 7 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time and not a moment earlier.

Here's the game: You can reserve one or two campsites in advance of your arrival, commencing at 7:00 a.m. Pacific time (10:00 a.m. Eastern, 2:00 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time) on the 15th day of the fifth month prior to the date of your desired arrival, even if said date is more, and particularly if it is less, than five months from the date of the desired, prescribed reservation date subject to state and local restrictions.

I blame Congress for this formula as it wrote and continues to refine the national tax code with an eye toward simplification. I'd lay a hundred bucks on local park rangers to come up with a better campground reservation system. But, it is what it is.

After several months of studying the rules and regulations of the International Campground Reservations Olympics Organizing Committee; after weeks of training, of checking and rechecking the prescribed phone number; after endless days spent perfecting our dialing techniques, Carolann and I started punching numbers five minutes early this morning just in case some idiot had released the lines early. Unfortunately for us, the National Park Service apparently doesn't hire time-challenged idiots. The phone system clicked from recorded message into a real-time connection with a real-life busy signal precisely at 7:00 a.m.

Carolann and I rapidly redialed on three phones. For the rest of my days I will curse myself for not having a fourth line. Or a fifth! Why the hell not? It's the 21st Century...we can play phones like Bingo cards!

At 7:03 a.m., as I continued to get a frantic busy signal, my champion wife made contact with the live phone queue! She got a recorded message telling her to wait! And wait, she did, receiving cheesy "wait" music instead of a busy signal. We were both so excited we reached across the room for high fives. I would have embraced her but we were both much too busy. She put her phone on speaker so that we might share our joy and the cheesy "wait" music even as I continued to dial for a Silver Medal connection of my own.

Two minutes later, I cut through the line!

Our euphoria is indescribable. We had both broken through the worldwide attack on the Yosemite National Park telephone reservation system and were in line, blessedly and joyously, awaiting our turns to talk with a live agent -- an angel who would be able to grant our urgent pleas for two campsites apiece -- within walking distance of each other, if that was even conceivable.

7:07 a.m. -- Our reservations agent came on the line. She was officious, yet pleasantly unsympathetic.

She dutifully checked the campgrounds, campsites and dates of arrival and departure we requested. We tried to work with her.

We varied our requested campgrounds, we tried juggling our dates and time of arrival.

We offered to arrive in pairs, inconspicuously in the middle of the night in nondescript vehicles or to creep into the campground clad in bearskins.

Nothing worked. Nearly 1,500 campsites in Yosemite National Park were sold out for August. Our agent thanked us and disconnected.

It was just 7:13 a.m.

Memories of Camp Many Ha-Has

2011-03-09T07:46:00.000-08:00

I think most of us remember our favorite vacations as the ones farthest from home. You loved your long family road trip from Los Angeles to Banff; a Canadian family loved visiting Southern California. Seems kind of silly when you think about it like that but I admit I've always felt that way about setting out on an adventure in my motor home, truck camper or just with a load of tents and sleeping bags. For some reason, the farther I traveled from home, the more grand and exotic the experience seemed to be.

It's early March 2011 and I just paid $3.84 for unleaded gas at Arco. It will probably hit four bucks by the time I finish typing this sentence. How can we plan a summer family vacation with no idea how much getting there and back will eat into our budget between June and September?


David Montgomery & Jeremy Williams

For starters, we could take our motorhome to a local RV park or nearby campground thereby eliminating those horrifying 75-gallon fill-ups. Or, we could stay home and camp in the back yard as we did when we were kids. Some of my happiest memories come from sleeping in the yard.

If it makes you feel better, or just to add to the family giggles, pack up the car, drive around the block singing a camp song and then back into your campsite and unload.

Years ago my son's future in-laws, George and Gloria Goold, found themselves in hard times, unable to afford even a basic camping trip to the mountains. Did they try to explain the problem to the kids while making a stern reality lesson of it? Did George and Gloria pity themselves in silence and console each other privately? Nope. They did something pretty remarkable. Rather than cancel a vacation they couldn't afford they created one they could.

They brought the campground to their home.

Mid-80s: Ranger George holding Sugar Bear,
"Goold Hysterical Rational Monument."
Note the teardrop trailer up by the garage.

George and Gloria invited their closest family friends, put up a huge campground sign across the driveway and pitched tents in the yard. They built a campfire pit, toasted marshmallows and made s'mores. They sang songs and played silly games until it was time to kiss each other good night and snuggle into their sleeping bags together under the stars, giddy smiles on their loving faces -- right outside their home.

They fired up lanterns at dusk, cooked on camp stoves and kept their perishable foods in that milky, cold water goo of a Coleman ice chest we all despised back then but lovingly remember now.

They went hiking in local public parks and gardens and they visited nearby attractions they had never seen before, just as those vacationers from Canada might have done.

Now, a quarter of a century later, it is the camping trip closest to their hearts. The family nearly cries when they talk about it.

The word "staycation" hadn't been imagined back then. Nor had the concept. My dear friends George and Gloria just naturally understood something that most of us sort of know but seldom embrace:

Vacation is not about going away. It's about coming together.

Copyright © 2011, Dave Williams. All rights reserved.

"DADGUMMIT!!!"

2011-03-02T09:21:00.000-08:00

Those of us who love outdoor life are always looking for new ideas, gadgets and tips for making our travels and sports more enjoyable. To that end we watch a lot of videos of RV and outdoor experts pitching products.

Maybe you already know Bill Dance. He's a well-known fisherman and talented TV host and video demonstrator. But we all have bad days. Here are some of Bill's.

Of Fish and Men

2011-02-23T13:58:00.001-08:00

My dad, Don Williams, was born and raised in Wyoming.

About fifty-five years ago he and his dad taught me to fish swift trout streams in blinding snowstorms.

I fished the Yellowstone River for the first time when I was only four or five. It was January in the mid-1950s, a stiff wind and vicious, blowing snow stung my tender cheeks and scared me. I grabbed my daddy's leg. He briefly caressed my head with his free hand just to let me know he was there for me.

Then he cast that Super Duper lure back upstream and continued reeling in the line.

A monstrous, lazy moose stood about fifteen feet away, knee-deep in the rapid, frigid Yellowstone, chewing on green river plants and looking at me with scant interest. The nearly-frozen river, the icy wind and snow, didn't bother that moose in the least. Certainly, he had no fear of me.

My dad, Donald, and his dad, Lester Williams, fished with a religious fervor.

For one thing, it was the only way they could hope to enjoy fresh trout for dinner. More than that, though, they embraced God's challenge that they provide for themselves and their families and be grateful for His bounty.

I loved my dad and grandpa. I wanted to be like them.

I'm a California kid just trying to hold onto family traditions. Yet, I occasionally have to jettison them when they no longer serve a practical purpose.

My son liberated me from fishing nearly thirty years ago.

Jeremy was about six or seven. I took him camping into Northern California's Plumas-Eureka Campground. He had caught his first fish there when he was just five, back when he was still anxious to learn from me and to please me with his effort.

(He still is and does, of course. I'm just sayin'...)

By the early 80s -- just a year or two after his fish harvesting experience -- he was thinking for himself:

"Dad," he said seriously and with no hint of sarcasm, "you know we can buy fish at the grocery store, right?"

He was right, of course, just as my dad and his dad were right in their time and place.

We have all been right together, forever.

Copyright © 2011, Dave Williams. All rights reserved.

At the corner of Thisaway and Thataway

2011-02-15T12:02:00.000-08:00

The other day I Googled my own blog searching for inspiration. Danged if I didn't find it!

Smack dab in the middle of Arkansas there is a tiny town called Yellville, where you'll find the intersection of Thataway Rd. and Thisaway Rd., just about a quarter mile from Whichaway Rd. Wouldn't you love to hear somebody out there giving directions to a lost RV family? Shades of Abbott and Costello.

Thataway and Thisaway isn't the only funny intersection you may come to. In an Arizona retirement community residents undoubtedly get a thousand laughs a day from living, as they do, at the corner of Stroke and Acoma Streets.

If you're bored and depressed in Albany, Georgia, you can always go hang out at the corner of Lonesome and Hardup.

Presidents are apparently tempting fodder for local street namers. Folks in Houston, Texas, are keeping true to their largely conservative perspective and their well-deserved reputation for being facetious by naming converging streets Clinton and Fidelity. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, people engaged in brief political commentary by creating the intersection of Nixon and Bluett.

You have to love Americans. We don't get as much credit as we deserve for having a national sense of humor. Just look at some of the street names scattered across our fruited plain:

There are several streets in the U.S. called Psycho Path.

In Story, Arkansas, the only way to get your truck camper to Constipation Ridge is to drive up Farfrompoopen Road.

And, while we're on that unfortunate topic...

Folks in Central Pennsylvania can direct you to Cowshit Ln. if you will kindly refrain from stealing the street sign. It seems to happen a lot. In fact, that's why the merchants of Amador City, California, years ago began selling copies of their iconic Pig Turd Alley sign, hoping that it would stop thefts of the actual sign. That must have worked. I bought one.

Some street namers seem to be completely baffled and give up...

Lambs Terrace, NJ

...while others just seem to lack interest.


Vallejo, CA

There are some streets you should steer clear of...

And the famous road less traveled.

Wherever your RV adventures take you, keep smiling. We live in a very funny country.

Watch For Staring Rocks!

2011-02-02T13:22:00.000-08:00

We all want to leave something behind.

We desperately want to have mattered.

We want to believe that our lives were not coincidental and that somebody, a few years after we're gone, might be grateful that we passed this way.

Most of us can leave our footprints in the sands of time just by leading good lives and enriching the lives of those who love us. Surely, that's enough. We don't crave fame.

And yet, it would be nice to be remembered for doing one small, unique thing that touches others; to leave something of a legacy, a personal thank you for the life we lived and loved and wanted to share.

Please meet my friend, Cheri Fuller.

Cheri is a passionate 60-ish wife, mother, grandma, friend and artist. The world is full of Cheris, of course, but this one is ours. She's as uniquely gifted and personally delightful as nearly everybody whose name you'll never learn nor remember, except for one difference:

Cheri paints Eyerocks and leaves them scattered about in the spirit of Johnny Appleseed.

If you occasionally wander the rivers, streams and the ocean beaches of Northern California, if you're really lucky, you may stumble upon an original Eyerock by Cheri. They are individually simple and yet magnificently striking works of art found lying about, here and there.

Eyerocks by Cheri are nothing more than a human endorsement of the fragile beauty of nature and a statement, that we humans are also part of Mother Nature's landscape.

We belong here and we matter in the grand scheme of things.

If you find one, turn it over carefully so as not to disrupt its canvas. You'll see this signature.

Take a picture. Take two or three. You've discovered a treasure that is, as far as I can figure, a unique gift to the world.

But, please put it back where and how you found it.

Nowhere to run

2010-09-16T12:38:00.000-07:00

"There is no such thing as boredom." -- D.M. Williams 1929-2002

That was my precious dad. He used to tell me that. I was always tempted to respond, "Well, not for simple-minded people, maybe," but even as a kid I usually had the good sense to keep my pie hole shut rather than give Dad a smartass comeback.

By Dad's challenge and my own definition I suppose I have often been simple-minded because I am usually bored at some point in virtually every day of my life. Certainly, I get bored when camping. As much as I love the great outdoors, whether I'm in one of my RVs or on a patch of dirt with a sleeping bag and a lawn chair, come midday I will inevitably break out a book and read for an hour or so. It's that time we wax about eloquently, how we go camping to relax. But then I get tired of reading and we never mention what comes next.

Nothing.

After cleaning the campsite or motor home, as the sun climbs high toward noon, I always get a little bored unless we're off on some adventure. This is when electricity and cable TV come in handy. I hate to admit that but if I can, so can you. It's nothing to be ashamed of.

So, here we are in the 21st Century and technology is almost everywhere, giving us more things to do in our down time. Or, depending on your perspective, more ways to avoid meaningful conversation and philosophical introspection. Even many camp grounds now offer pretty reliable WiFi and cell phone signals, making it possible to Tweet your heart's content to thousands of mostly nameless, indifferent people hundreds of miles away rather than actually talk with the one or two people sitting next to you.

Like laptops, the cell phones have become virtual arcades that can consume entire days of your life if you wish or allow it. I recently got the top-of-the-line (for a week or two, anyway,) "smart phone," the Android EVO 4G.

I wish we could go back to naming cars, and now phones, after animals instead of techno-geek babble like "Android EVO 4G" and "BMW Series 3 Mach 6 BFD!"

I miss the Bronco, the Impala and the Barracuda.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. The magic phone.

My phone will allow me to communicate with people in countless ways. I can talk on the phone, of course, though that assumes I wish to hear what the other person has to say. (Two-way conversations are sooo 20th Century!) To avoid that I can email, text, Tweet, or post endless streams of meaningless consciousness on Facebook, MySpace and other social networks.

"Just made a tuna sandwich! LOL!"

My phone will even allow me to talk to people while seeing their faces as they see mine. Haven't done that yet. Can't really see how viewing my fat face on a tiny screen would advance our communication.

But I can do these things almost everywhere on Earth. It will soon become so. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/technology/13wifi.html?_r=1&src=busln

I can take campground pictures and send them to you instantaneously, if not sooner. If I catch a big fish I can show it to you within seconds of its landing! (As if I'd be fishing when I have all these gadgets to play with.)

And by now you're wondering if I am writing in support of or opposition to high-tech camping.

The answer is, both.

The problem is obvious and nothing we motor home jockeys haven't heard for years: "You say you want to 'get away from it all' but then you take it all with you!" We get that from tent campers who have no TV to watch about midday and from people who have trucks with over-sized dualies to haul dune buggies and jet skis everywhere they go.

Still, it's a fair question and one for which I have no pat answer.

But, riddle me this:

Why is reading a book at a campground more noble than watching TV, reading a blog or socializing on Facebook with your iPad? It's personal time, right? You can do it alone or while sitting next to your spouse and kids, sharing natchos and guacamole, just as you do when you're reading a book. To hear us tell it when we get home we spent the entire week resting, reading and playing board games with the family. Balderdash. We did some of each and we spent a lot of time just goofing off or being bored. That's nothing to be ashamed of, either. It's who we are.

Heck, your family can only put up with an hour or two of bonding, anyway.

We'll eventually get over the novelty of WiFi and cell phone reception everywhere and learn to accept them as tools and not merely toys. Until then we just need to impose time limits on ourselves as we do with the kids in front of the TV or on their video games.

I can't see how family and friends will ever go out of style. So, celebrate technology but love your peeps! Keep the campfire tradition. Make S'mores! Sing songs, tell stories and laugh! Try to learn to embrace your boredom, too. It's who you are. It keeps you balanced.

As kids today say, it's all good.

(But in your down time, Tweet me! @DaveWilliams_1)

© 2010 by David L. Williams, all rights reserved

The lonely road

2010-07-29T07:12:00.000-07:00

Many years ago my world ended at the age of 30. It happened the day I moved out of my house, away from my wife and four-year-old son, and into a drab apartment. Divorce happens and when one is young it truly seems to be the end of all that matters.

Happily, we are profoundly ignorant in youth.

These days, nearly 30 years later, I travel with my darling Carolann and our precious girls, Cricket and Lady. Our 35-foot Class A motor home is perfect for us and so are we. I also hit the road alone frequently because I must. For that I have a Lance camper and Ford F-350. And when I go, I travel in my own good company because after my first thirty years of living I learned something rather delightful.

I like me.

"In solitude, where we are least alone." -- Lord Byron

Shortly after the separation I was forced to go on vacation alone. Still buffeted by the emotional storm I set out for a week by myself in a too-big rented house along the Northern California coast which, of course, was where my now ex-wife and I had spent many happy times together. Great choice, huh?

For the first time in my life I was truly alone. At the age of 30 I spent my first night ever in absolute and despairing solitude. I cried myself to sleep and the sound of it was disturbing.

"With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves." -- Eric Hoffer

It's odd, I remember thinking, to pass entire days without uttering a single word because there was nobody else to hear it. So, several days into my forced solitary confinement I tried talking aloud to myself. It was a comically depressing exercise and I soon gave it up. But then a funny thing happened. I continued to hear my thoughts.

This, too, was a first in my life and a stunning one.

It was a distant voice, quiet and almost shy. It was I, trying to get my own attention. And so, I began to listen.

I told myself to get out of my wallow and take a shower. Leave this place for awhile, I said. And so, we did.

"I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity." -- Einstein

I put on nice clothes: slacks, dress shirt, tie and jacket. I took myself to a nice restaurant and when I boldly asked for a table for one I added, "by the window, if possible." I ordered wine, treated myself to an expensive meal and had a nice, long, quiet internal conversation while watching the sun slide behind the Pacific.

"People who aren't alone are rather noisy, aren't they?" I commented. "Yes, they certainly are!" I replied with a grin. And then I opened my notebook and began to write my impressions of the people around me in the restaurant. My inner self did the eavesdropping while I wrote descriptions. I gave them names. I invented their lives and I found I enjoyed them as well.

"What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely alone can be." -- Ellen Burstyn

By the end of the evening we went back to the rented house near the thunderous surf and amazingly, it was no longer empty.

No place ever has been since.

Wanderers Anonymous

2010-07-14T10:07:00.000-07:00

My name is Dave and I have wanderlust.

I inherited this compulsion from my father, the late Don Williams. He lived for the fever. It was unyielding.

He would throw a few things into a bag and hit the road alone with only a moment's notice to his wife. She learned to be okay with that. It was who he was. He needed to chase the horizon every few weeks or he would surely wilt and become a joyless, withered old man.

He would jump in his old Ford pickup and speed away from California as quickly as possible.

Achieving Nevada he slowed and began to breathe easy. Meandering across the desert in the good company of his own thoughts, he stopped occasionally to stretch, take a walk, kick a few rocks and get a cup of coffee and a sandwich. He chatted amiably with the waitress and the truck driver seated next to him at the counter. The three of them would inevitably find things in their lives, sometimes people, they had in common. If Dad whiled away most of an afternoon in idle conversation he'd find a motel room. A snort of scotch and a snootful of Louis L'Amour would soothe him to sleep for the night.

At the hint of dawn, he'd move on, eventually showing up unannounced on the doorstep of distant relatives in Utah. The visit might last an hour or two, sometimes a day or two.

Soon enough he would reunite with his heart, which still lived in his boyhood home in Rock Springs, Sweetwater County, Wyoming.

Sweetwater County, where the wind whips the jackrabbits mean.

Trout as big as a man's arm frolic in Green River until a Super Duper garnished with a savory red salmon egg invites one to fight its way into your creel.

Here's a little secret most wanderers don't know: when you travel through Wyoming the horses you see on the prairie are still wild. If you don't see a fence, that's because there ain't one.

I'm romancing the place. Frankly, if you've ever driven through that country you have probably driven through without noticing. I-80 is straight and fast. You go thataway, zipping past the offramps for Green River, Purple Sage, Rock Springs and Reliance. If you do it in a winter tableau of prairie white the freeway exits may actually be blocked with signs reading "Town Closed".

Keep moving, wanderer. Rawlins, Laramie and Cheyenne lie east, dead ahead. Pinedale and Aspen Hole -- I'm sorry, Jackson Hole (but never just, plain Jackson) -- are north on Highway 191.

The Tetons are always in sight. Salt Lake is a hop, skip and a sandwich stop away.

Move on when you're ready and not a moment sooner.

© 2010 by David L. Williams, all rights reserved

Sting of the road

2010-07-08T11:03:00.000-07:00

I am thrilled by the fever of wanderlust.

I am dazzled and excited every morning I awaken someplace new.

Like most RV vacationers, Carolann and I think about full-timing when we're able to retire. Wandering at will, from here to there and then someplace else; it seems like the perfect reward for two lives well-lived.

We've punched our workday time clocks for forty years. We've each loved, lived and lost a first marriage. We've raised our kids, separately at first and then together. And now, still in our fifties, we've been together for 22 years -- nearly half of our lives.

We've done right, well and honorably. We're in love, we deserve each other and we're not letting go. Not ever.

So, what's next?

Do we have what it takes to live a life of vacation?

Carolann and I agree that even if we were able to whittle the stuff of our lives down to what we could carry in about four cargo bins and a closet we'd still like to have a sticks and bricks house of some sort just to feel the security of being tethered to normal life, the only life we've known. And who knows, maybe we'd get over that after a couple of years of wandering hither and yon.

I'd love to hear from some of you who have done it. And here's the big question:

Don't you ever want a vacation from your lifelong vacation?

I once read a story about a well-to-do, elderly widow who lived full-time aboard a cruise ship. She had the finest and most expensive stateroom on board. She had daily maid service, room service and every fabulous meal of her life was prepaid with no preparation or cleanup required. She was constantly and lavishly entertained, sailed from one beautiful port of call to another and made new friends every week. From time to time she had family members join her and occasionally she would disembark and spend a week or two with some of them.

But she grew restless.

She was literally and figuratively adrift. While living a life of complete luxury and freedom she came to miss the one thing she had given up: purpose.

This is what scares me away from a fulltime RV life.

I worry that after six months, or a year or two, we'd start to run low on anticipation. The thrill of the unknown would be tempered by repeated experience of life on the road. We'd learn to expect the unexpected: the curves, the climbs, the static-though-changing views; everything good, bad and indifferent. We would start thinking there's no need to go rushing down the highway every week or two because when you've seen one RV park you've seen them all. I worry that I would come to hate RV park offices, maps, rules, TV guides and WiFi instructions that nearly always require assistance.

Eventually, we'd hook up and chill out. With nowhere in particular to go and no reason to keep moving we'd just move when necessary because the parks have rules about staying in one place too long. That, in fact, would become the metaphor of our lives.

We'd want to go home but would have none.

(Cue music: Peggy Lee, Is That All There Is?)

Melodramatic? Probably. I'm just imagining, after all.

I've heard the lectures, read the blogs and seen the books about all the carefree wonders of living the life of Riley as a full-timer.

But there has to be another side of it.

Those of you who have tried it or are still living the good life on wheels, please help me out here. I'm really curious.

© 2010 by David L. Williams, all rights reserved

Little pictures

2010-06-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

There are two ways of looking at everything.

I'm not talking about the old half-empty, half-full thing. I mean macro and micro -- big picture, little picture.

Think for a moment about pictures in the literal sense. Imagine a picture of the Grand Canyon. You may have some you took, yourself. Whether you took those pictures with a fancy digital SLR or a cell phone they all have one thing in common: inadequacy. You cannot translate the mind-staggering magnificence and scope of one of the world's greatest panoramic views into a limited rectangular, two-dimensional image.

On the other hand, if you take a picture of a single wildflower growing at the very edge of the Grand Canyon, at the peak of its short yet glorious life, the result may so delight you that you will print and frame it and put it in your home to remind you of its fragile and fleeting beauty.

Life is like that.

We all have friends who joke that their idea of roughing it is a hotel room with no Wi-Fi. (I always laugh as if it's the first time I've heard it.) To them the idea of spending a week or two sleeping in a tent and cooking outdoors on a small stove is the very epitome of Hell on Earth. Even when you show them your nice motorhome and all of its amenities they grin and say cute things like, "You have all this stuff in your house. Why leave?"

Wanderlust.

Good question. Why leave?

What makes me excited about the idea of leaving the home I love for a too-little while? Where is it I yearn to go and why?

Easy...

I don't know.

The best answer I can come up with is, I don't get excited about leaving, I'm excited about going. Where doesn't really matter. It's the prospect of adventure, the next turn in the road. It's the American heritage; it's in our blood.

It's why we love Willie Nelson, for heaven's sake!

On the road again!
Goin' places that I've never been.
Seein' things that I may never see again,
And I can't wait to get on the road again.

That's the big picture answer. I just want to go thataway.

On the other hand it's the little things that explain the love I have of my adventures.

-- Coffee tastes better outside.
-- Dirt smells good and never needs sweeping or mopping.
-- Birds live in a happy/angry/excited chattering world I could never discover from my desk, family room or kitchen.
-- My dogs prefer to lie in the dirt outside rather than on a soft, clean sofa inside. That's good enough for me.
--Children in a campground forget about TV and video games and revert to ancient childish skills: they make an entire world out of a single tree, a nearby rock and fully-formed imaginary friends and foes. They get filthy. And, happy.
-- I smile and greet strangers in a campground as easily as if they were old friends. At home I tend to look away from them.

-- I have things I should do but nothing I must do.
-- Conversations with my wife and friends turn expansive, occasionally philosophical, occasionally anecdotal, we chill, we listen, we feel, we laugh all day long.

We allow ourselves to take stock of our lives, pat ourselves on the back and hug each other.

I'm itching to go. Aren't you?

A chirpy, "Good morning!"

2010-06-23T11:25:00.000-07:00

I awoke in an unusually good mood today. I'm really happy.

There's no particular reason for it and it's not that I ever wake up grumpy, because I don't. I just awoke super smiley today, that's all.

That wouldn't be remarkable if I was in some glorious RV park in my motorhome. Everybody we meet on the road seems happy and relaxed but I'm still in my stick house in L.A. County. I have to drive to work on L.A. freeways this afternoon.

Being this happy at home seems suspiciously weird.

I went to the grocery store at about 9:30 a.m. In the parking lot I approached a woman leaving the store, pushing a basket and apparently in deep concentration. She seemed oblivious to my existence.

"Good morning!" I chirped. This is not like me. This is something new. I don't talk to strangers, especially strangers who seem to be busy, even if only in their private little worlds. Maybe especially then.

That's what it is, really. I'm not an unfriendly person. I just don't want to intrude on your privacy. But, for some reason and for the first time in my life that I can recall I smiled broadly at the concentrating stranger and chirped -- yes, I'll use that verb again because it's perfect -- I chirped "Good morning!"

The woman blinked and look momentarily confused and maybe just a tad defensive. Who are you? What do you want? (I'm sure those were her first thoughts.) Why are you bothering me?

But she forced herself to smile weakly and nod slightly. I think she also picked up her pace just a bit.

Inside the store I decided to experiment. I chirped "Good morning" to almost everybody just to see their reactions.

The people who work in the store responded in kind but they have to. It's their jobs, so they don't really count. But, I give them a lot of credit for taking pride in their small, personal part-ownership of Albertsons. How can you not love people who love their jobs?

A man slightly older than me, wearing shorts and a Mexican tourist fishing hat, smiled broadly and returned my greeting as I scooped up baby red potatoes. I think he and I could have sat down at Starbucks, had a cup of coffee and solved all the problems of the world together. He's the kind of person I meet with absolute regularity in campgrounds and RV parks.

I guess it stands to reason that men about my age or slightly older would be the most likely to find genuine cheer in my greeting than younger men or women of any age.

In the cold and pain relief aisle I met a guy I would guess to be in his late 30s or early 40s. He smiled, nodded and said "Hi!" brightly but rather professionally. For a brief moment I felt like a prospective client but his smile whipped right past me to his watch. I'm sure he didn't mean to do that. This is the best place I've ever written for me to use the word, "perfunctory."

I encountered a young woman in the pasta sauce section. She had a small girl by the hand and a baby in the basket. (In a baby carrier in the shopping cart, I mean.) She looked pleasantly surprised by my greeting, returned my smile, gave me a little finger wave and cheerfully said, "Hello!" I think I amused her. It struck me that without noticing I have apparently slipped into the age where young women no longer think I'm trying to hit on them. They probably think I'm just a cute, harmless old man now.

Darn.

But, I continued.

A woman about my age glanced at my chirpy intrusion and said nothing. She quickly transformed her glance into one of those panning gazes beyond me as if to appear that was she was looking wistfully for her long-departed love to return from war. Or maybe she was looking for the saltine crackers aisle.

I was careful to not chirp "Good morning!" to any children. Especially not little girls. I didn't want anybody to become suspicious that I might be a dangerous, dirty old man. That's sad, isn't it? It is to me.

By the time I reached the checkstand I felt like Santa Claus.

I had smiled and chirped my way through a supermarket full of people who might mention to their spouses or best friends, in passing, about the weird, strangely happy guy they had met in Albertsons this morning. It might be a revelation to them. They, themselves, might become happier and more outgoing in public.

Or, not.

More likely none of them gave it a second thought once I was at a safe and non-communicative distance.

On the other hand, I learned something vitally important for myself:

Being happy makes me happy.

What you do with it is up to you.

RV lifestyles of the rich and fru-fru

2010-06-18T09:37:00.000-07:00

Have you ever walked through one of those million dollar motorhomes?

I dig the on-board washer and dryer. The spectacular sound system and the 52-inch HDTV screen that magically slides up the wall are very cool. For the life of me I can't understand why you would want marble counter tops and gold and crystal chandeliers on a mirrored ceiling in a recreational vehicle but that's a matter of personal taste. To each his own.

They're impressive as all get out but what I really don't get is where you find the nerve to drive a million dollar RV on public highways. The fear of having a wreck would make me apoplectic. Bugs smashing themselves into the afterlife on my million dollar windshield would drive me out of my mind. The very idea of attaching a million dollar water and sewage system to public faucets and toilet dump pipes would make me a sniffing snob on the order of Thurston B. Howell III.

Do these things have bidets? I'm just curious.

I do understand that if you can afford one of these rolling mansions you're not likely to be terribly concerned about the cost of maintenance and insurance. I get that.

But, where do you go in a million dollar motorhome? Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park RV Camp? A KOA littered with kids? A patch of desert in Quartzsite?

Don't you feel just a little ostentatious parking next to a pop-up tent trailer containing a giggling family of five, ignorantly joyous in their RV peasantry?

A couple of years ago Carolann and I took our brand new $100,000 motorhome to a swanky RV resort in Vegas. It was one of those places where you can buy your own lot for a mere quarter-to-a-half-million dollars and dress it up with fancy landscaping and magnificent outdoor bars and barbecue islands.

This picture, personally taken at the Vegas resort, is not of a public group area. It is a single, privately owned RV pad. Every feature including walls and all hardscape are custom built at the owner's expense. (Click on the picture for a closer view, then click the BACK arrow to return here.)

Carolann and I were just renting a space for an extravagant weekend to celebrate our 20th anniversary. The lot we rented was unimproved. A slab of concrete and hookups, nothing more. Which was fine with us. But next to the other motorhomes in that place we felt like the Beverly Hillbillies in our spanking-new Sea Breeze.

(Important! If you ever make a reservation at such a place don't tell them you want "full hookups". They'll laugh themselves sick. Instead, ask if the price they quoted includes the butler. Then you'll have 'em playing defense.)

One time I accidentally spent a night at an "eco adventure resort" along the California coast that even I, a native Californian, found hard to believe.

It had a lodge, cabins, RV pads and tent spaces. It had a spa, complete with hot tub and massage facilities. Each tent space featured a large wooden deck on which to pitch your tent so it wouldn't have to actually come into contact with dirt. I'm not kidding.

Oh, and no dogs allowed. In a campground!

This place had daily yoga classes. The cutely, quaintly-named "General Store" sold breakfast croissants baked fresh on the premises and brewed-while-you-wait, five-dollar Starbucks lattes; it offered fresh fruit, wine and cheese with an assortment of fancy crackers. Custom-ordered picnic baskets with such also offered, of course.

The bar and "grille" (the "e" gives a grill respectability, I guess,) offered catering services.

Catering.

In a campground.

You know what it didn't have? Recreational vehicles. Not one... until I dropped in like a bad penny, alone in my truck camper with my scruffy beard, a sweat-stained cowboy hat and wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt.

I looked like a homeless man with gas money.

So, where are these million dollar motorhomes in the real world? Outside of Vegas resorts and RV shows, where are they? Seriously.

I really don't like to sound like a poor snob. As I explained in an earlier post, I graduated from dirt camping to motorhome semi-luxury. I get it.

----------------------------------------------------------

PS. Last week I asked for pictures of your hometown tourist attractions. I got a few but would like more for the Readers' Scrapbook I plan to add to this blog. If you don't have pictures of local tourist attractions, please take some. Or, just send me your favorite photos of your adventures out Thataway!

You retain all rights, of course, and I won't divulge any personal information except your names, if you wish, and where the photos were taken.

Send them to: dave.thatawayroad@gmail.com

Thanks! Can't wait to hear from you!

Postcards from Thataway!

2010-06-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

There is something about road trips that is uniquely American.

It's in our blood. Our national history is one of discovery. Our heritage is written of exploration.

We have itchy feet.

I was blessed to be born not only in the land of milk, honey and inherent freedom of movement, but also in a region steeped in the romantic history of the Gold Rush; I was born and raised in Sacramento, with its confluence of two great rivers fed by hundreds of cold, clear mountain streams. I have spent my life taking day trips to scores of foothill mining camps and towns that survive to this day, places with names made famous by Mark Twain: Rough & Ready, Fiddletown, Angels Camp and Jacksass Hill.

I wish you'd come for a visit. I'd love to show it all off.

All Americans can make this claim.

Wherever you call home, from the Wild West across our proud, enormous Heartland to the historic battlefields and cradles of our democracy in the East, you have history running through your veins.

I'd love to come visit you and have you show it all off.

But here's the point of this essay, a stunning epiphany to me...

I always dress up my blogs with pictures. Who wants to just look at dry words? So, when I went through my lifetime of photographs looking for perfect images of the places I want to share with you -- the places of my personal history -- I found I have none.

Zero. Zip. Zilch.

Over nearly sixty years I have been to Sutter's Fort in Sacramento dozens of times. As a child I chased squirrels in the shadows of the California state capitol. As an adult I have enjoyed some of the wildest parties and happiest times of my life on the cobblestone streets and the waterfront of historic Old Sacramento.

The mining camps, the rivers and streams, Sutter's Mill in Coloma (the actual site of the original gold discovery) and many other points of fascination -- I've spent my lifetime taking them for granted.

And, taking no pictures.

I'll bet we all do that. We never go into our own backyard as tourists.

We should. We really should.

Play tourist in your hometown and around the block. Send me some pictures and personal notes about them. I'll share them in future essays as Postcards from Thataway!

Send them to me at: dave.thatawayroad(at)gmail.com

Roadside Shoefiti

2010-05-28T19:03:00.000-07:00

Everybody knows the backroads and two-lane highways are where the real America lies. All too often, though, we find ourselves using freeways because we're stuck with a schedule that must be adhered to with at least a sloppy degree of accuracy. But, oh the things you can miss on freeways.

Shoefiti, for example!

It's estimated that there are 75 shoe trees around the world and that most of them are here in the good old U.S. of A. where they are believed to have been invented. Theories abound as to how the practice of throwing old shoes into a tree got started. Some say it began around the time of World War II when soldiers celebrating the end of their enlistments would tie their combat boots together and fling them into a tree. Others have been known to undertake this unique art form as a rite of passage related to births, deaths, marriages, and get this -- those randy Scots are even said to commemorate the happy loss of a young lad's virginity by proudly displaying their Ghillie Brogues in tree branches!

I think most of the shoefiti we see in this country is like the compulsion so many people seem to have for throwing coins into any small body of water whatsoever. It's just plain old American monkey-see, monkey-do.

This shoe tree is one Carolann and I encountered a couple of years ago on Hwy 97 just north of Shaniko, Oregon. We didn't know of its existence, much less the fact that it was considered to be one of, if not the largest shoe tree in the world! We didn't go looking for it. We just happened upon it while on our way to a family reunion in Deer Park, Washington.

Tragically, I must now report that this magnificent treebute to Mother Nature, human nature and podiatric cobbling craftsmanship was recently destroyed by fire. Some suspect arson. Others believe the tree was hit by lightning. Either way, it is a sad loss.

There is a wonderful short video of this famous shoe tree on the website called Roadside America. It is a sad yet fitting memorial to a very special piece of Americana accompanied by a perfect piece of music called Shoe Tree Requiem. Watch it now. I'll wait for you.

Perhaps we should observe a moment of silence for these departed soles.

Happily, there are dozens of these roadside marvels yet thriving from tree to shining tree. Where have you seen them?

(The brief history of shoefiti, indeed the term itself, was culled from a wonderful website where you can learn more about shoe art than you ever thought to imagine! Have a look: Shoefiti--Save-Our-Shoe-Trees)

© 2010 by David L. Williams, all rights reserved.

RV Versus Tent Camping

2010-05-19T09:39:00.000-07:00

I don't make the distinction.

Like most people I started camping as a kid in a tent in dirt campgrounds with my dad, mom and younger sister. Sometimes my dad and I would go, just the two of us. We'd hike and fish and sleep on the ground under a gazillion stars without the tent or even the campground. Those times are cherished memories. But, now that I'm older I love not having to get my fat, creaky body off the hard ground in the middle of the night to walk 100 yards in the cold to a fly-infested outhouse.

To me it's all "camping" whenever I spend more time outside than inside and don't have things I should be doing.

I think that's the key to it, right there. When you're camping you have things you must do but nothing you should do. You leave your guilt bag at home.

As kids we pitched a tent in the backyard and watched the sky for UFOs all night while chowing down on RC Colas, Hostess Snowballs, Look bars and Chicken Bones candy. We always woke up the next morning with the sun in our faces; the tent was getting hot and we had kids Sunday morning hangovers from too much sugar and not enough sleep.

Now I awaken refreshed, in a quiet RV park around 5AM, in a soft bed next to my sweet wife. I tiptoe across the carpeted bedroom to use the proper bathroom and from there I close two sets of pocket doors behind me to give Carolann her privacy in Slumberland. I press "START" on the preset coffeemaker, feed and walk the dogs, boot up my computer or pick up my book and begin the day on the sofa, swaddled in creature comforts, blinking cobwebs out of my brain.

At a sensible hour, say six or seven, I might go outside and take my leisure in a folding chair, perhaps making a campfire if it's still chilly. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I just sip coffee and greet the neighbors as they walk their dogs.

Here's an embarrassing revelation: as much as I enjoy having coffee and reading a book outside I also enjoy watching a movie first thing in the morning on our motorhome TV. Just sometimes. How decadent is that?

Who made the rule that "camping" must imply "roughing it"?

When you get right down to it camping has nothing to do with where you sleep and change your clothes. It doesn't matter if you get your milk out of a fridge or an ice chest or whether you cook over a campfire, a Coleman stove or in a microwave/convection oven in your Mini Winnie. Camping is just being away from home free to do what you like because you left your guilt bag behind. It's the people you're with, the deeply gratifying thoughtful and funny conversations with family and good friends you never seem to have enough time for. It's eyes that sparkle just because you're all together and the stress is gone.

Camping is unleashing your spirit and letting it run joyously free like a dog chasing gulls on a beach.

And when you go home, as you must, your heart is happy knowing you'll do it again.

And that guilt bag isn't nearly so heavy.

© 2010 by David L. Williams, all rights reserved

My Travelogue: Jellystone Park, 1999

2010-05-11T12:39:00.001-07:00

Everywhere Carolann and I go in our motorhome or Lance truck camper I keep a travelogue. It's sort of a combination diary/travel guide. It reminds me of the places we've been, the experiences we've shared and the things I've learned but might forget if I don't write them down.

This entry, written eleven years ago, falls into that last category: lessons remembered.

* * * * * * * * * *

July 2, 1999: Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park RV Camp at Beaver Creek, Cobb Mountain, CA.

No kidding. That's what this place is called.

When I decided spontaneously to take this weekend trip alone to get some writing done it didn't occur to me that this is the July 4th weekend and that all the nice RV parks along the Mendocino Coast would be booked. So, I'm here instead.

This place is located ten miles west of Clear Lake as the crow flies, 21 miles from the town of Lakeport. I know a lot of people who love Clear Lake but it never did much for me. It's one of California's inland, low-altitude lakes that gets brutally hot in the summer and here I am in July. If it wasn't for the excellent air conditioner in my Lance camper I wouldn't be typing this, I'd be running like a crazed dog to the ocean where it is forty degrees cooler.

This doesn't look anything at all like the Jellystone Park I remember from the cartoons. No mountains, no pine trees; no green grass or cute bears wearing hats and ties. No pic-a-nic baskets.

Unlike the lovely pictures on the park's website it's mostly sparse, brown grass with a few scrub oaks; very dusty, dry and hot.

Did I mention this is July?

The park consists of five or six rows of graveled roads and hard pan RV pads. It does have a small, dark green man-made body of water they call a creek and people are paddling around in kayaks and peddle boats which are free to the paying public. I suppose that's nice but they're making a hell of a lot of noise and the water looks scummy to me.

As I drove into the park muttering to myself about all of this I thought Carolann would hate it here and then I immediately realized, no, she would not. This place would be a virtual theme park compared to the similar but humorless places she used to camp as a kid whereas I grew up in the campgrounds of the High Sierra, the Rockies and California's scenic North Coast.

Suddenly, I realized for the first time that I am a camping snob.

The many kids in this park are having a ball, splashing obliviously in the dark, creepy-green creek, laughing, riding bikes, running and kicking up a dust cloud folks can probably see in Glenhaven. The adults are clustered in small groups shaded by trailer awnings enjoying snacks and cold drinks, telling stories, sharing memories, laughing heartily and often.

I, on the other hand, was silently cursing the heat, the dust and the noise looking for a pristine spot to dock my Lance as far away from these lovely, happy people as possible.

I don't like admitting that but it's the truth. Suddenly, I am ashamed and a little bit lonely.

As a future grandpa (I hope,) I need to remember this day.

I want to never forget that when you're a kid heat is no big deal and a little water and a lot of dirt are pretty neat things to have together in one place.

These are the places and times that define families and construct future generations.

While writing this Travelogue entry I just saw a doe and two fawns grazing not a hundred yards from here... over there, by the three long-abandoned, rusted cars and the pickup truck with no wheels or doors.

I guess beauty is where you find it.

© 2010 by David L. Williams, all rights reserved

About Dave Williams

2010-05-05T12:47:00.001-07:00

Howdy!

I'm Dave Williams.

I write this blog because the only thing I love as much as seeing the world through an RV windshield and popping a cold beer at a campfire is writing about it. I try to update this blog every Friday evening.

There is nothing I would rather do than write while in my truck camper or motorhome.

I also have another blog I write with a dear friend from my hippie disc jockey days, The Aging of Aquarius.

I talk for money. Forty-one years as a radio disc jockey, news jockey and talk host has provided me a good life. I have pitched my camp in the airwaves of Sacramento, Memphis, San Francisco and Los Angeles.I pull my paycheck in big cities. But I am first the son of a son of Rock Springs, Sweetwater County, Wyoming. I have taken fighting rainbow trout from the cold rapids of the Snake River and hiked California's Desolation Valley.

I sleep best and deepest in a down-filled mummy bag with my face exposed to the frigid cold air of Sierra and Rocky Mountain nights.

The smell of pine and loam, the wispy scent of a dying campfire; moonglow in flickering aspen leaves. That's a serious night's sleep.

Between road trips I live and work in Los Angeles with the lovely and feisty Carolann Conley Williams, my wonderful wife of 22 years. We have two magnificent sons, a cherished daughter-in-law and two perfect grandsons nearby.

These days most of our outdoor adventures are taken in comfort. We have a 35-foot 2009 Sea Breeze class-A motorhome and a 1994 Lance camper which I haul around on solo trips with my Ford F-350.

Pull up a camp chair and let's chat!

dave.thatawayroad@gmail.com

Shake, Rattle and Roll: The Williams Family Wild West Roundup

2010-05-02T08:31:00.000-07:00

My favorite vacation is the one we took about 13 or 14 years ago.

It was our first motorhome adventure and in spite of some fairly significant problems along the way, I was hooked. RV travel, I decided, is the only way to live.

I was a popular radio personality in Sacramento in those days and managed to talk an RV dealer into giving me a brand new 38-foot gas-powered Class A motorhome to take wherever I wished for two weeks. The deal was, every morning I would phone the radio station and do a short report (aka, "commercial") explaining where we were, the exciting things we'd seen and done, how wonderful the motorhome is and how the luxurious convenience of that motorhome had brought our family closer together in blissful, eternal bond.

And where you could buy one, of course.

Sweet deal, huh? It was for me, though I'm pretty sure the RV dealer felt differently when we returned.

"On the road again!... I just can't wait to get on the road again!"

I like to start every road trip by treating the family to a loud, bad rendition of Willie Nelson's signature song as we're putting the sticks and stone house in our rearview mirror. They roll their eyes and groan but I know they'll remember me sweetly for it when I'm gone.

And so, we were off; Carolann, our sons Nathan and Jeremy, Jeremy's girlfriend and eventual wife, Emily, and me.

Like a band of gypsies we went down the highway!

Sacramento to Sparks, Nevada, is only 135 miles but that's where we stopped for the first night because we got a late start and having never driven a big rig before three hours of stressed concentration was about all I could handle.

Oh, yeah -- and somewhere in the first hundred miles our brand-new, never-used motorhome had lost all electronic functions in the dashboard. It drove fine but we had no idea how fast we were going, no clue as to whether we were about to run out of gas and no headlights.

For some reason the turn signals and brake lights didn't want to have anything to do with this calamity and continued to work.

Poised on the western edge of the great deserts of Nevada and Utah and pointed THATAWAY with no patience for sitting two or three days in a Reno repair shop, we accepted the challenges and charged into our two-week, four-thousand mile adventure the next morning with no electronics to guide us.

We thrilled to the spectacular Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City and played peek-a-boo with the puckish prairie dogs of Devils Tower, Wyoming.

We meandered in awe through Yellowstone Park and hiked lightly among its world-renowned geysers.

We drove the literally-breathtaking Beartooth Highway to its dizzying eleven-thousand foot summit and beyond, into Red Lodge, Montana, the Little Bighorn Battlefield, Mt. Rushmore and the Black Hills of South Dakota including historic Deadwood and the magnificent Crazy Horse monument. Then, onward to Zion National Park, across Southern Nevada into Southern California and then 400 miles north and home again. We did it all in two glorious weeks sans electronics.

We never drove at night, we bought gas at every opportunity and my wife and son gauged our highway speed using roadside mile markers and a watch with a second hand.

But, wait...there's more!

Our never-used motorhome, plastic carpet covers still in place, began literally falling apart by the mile. Cabinet doors wouldn't stay shut. The bathroom and refrigerator doors wouldn't stay shut. A window screen blew loose. Mirrors began to rattle. Stray screws began falling out with such frequency we could never walk barefoot inside the rig.

Duct tape became the primary theme to our homey decor. It was everywhere.

At one RV park, inexperienced as we were, Carolann and I managed to back into a very solid bush. Bush, though biologically correct, is a bad way to describe it. It was more like a boulder with branches and leaves. It did not manage to shake some sense into the electrical system but it did make a scratchy dent in a lower panel that seemed to get bigger each time I looked at it.

Oh, and did I mention that our beautiful young future-daughter-in-law was highly prone to motion sickness but too embarrassed to tell us? Somewhere in the Rockies she learned for the first time she is also prone to altitude sickness. The poor thing was pretty miserable throughout the trip.

The dealer was apoplectic when he saw us limp back onto the lot. Wearing four-thousand miles of road dust and squashed bugs, duct tape flying like streamers in a Home Depot parade, we surely looked like Clark Griswold's Cousin Eddie and family arriving for National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

But honest to God, this is my favorite family vacation of all time. Because between the knicks, bruises, queasy tummies and duct tape door locks we shared a million smiles, hugs and laughs that we still carry in our hearts.

The best memories are full-spectrum life experiences: the good, the bad and the sticky.

© 2010 by David L. Williams, all rights reserved

Moose in a snowstorm

2010-04-27T08:41:00.000-07:00

Americans have deep wanderlust. It’s our heritage. It’s genetic.

My earliest memory of a road trip is vague and fuzzy, like a barely-remembered black and white movie. The images come to me in flashing bits and pieces.

My parents, handsome and beautiful in their early twenties. My dad's dad, not quite fully gray, no more than 40-something, I guess. He's already outside. My grandma in the front seat, plump and stern yet doting and loving. She and my mother wrap me tightly for a blizzard. Sweater. Jacket. Mittens. Woolen hat.

I can barely move or breathe but I am snug and warm and safe. Mommy opens the car door and lets me out. She tells me to stay close to Daddy.

I'm no more than five or six years old. More like three or four, I think. Can't remember exactly. It was fifty-some years ago. That, I'm sure of.

Grandpa Williams whispers to me excitedly. "David, come here!" And then he points.

There is a monster-tall moose standing in the Yellowstone River. He's just standing there, calmly looking at us while he casually munches on something green spilling from both sides of his mouth.

It is snowing hard. I keep fluttering snowflakes out of my eyelashes to watch the moose with amazement. He flutters, too, but looks at me with only vague interest.

Daddy and Grandpa cast their fishing lines upstream and watch the lines drift quickly past us.

They reel in and do it again.

I'm cold. The moose leaves, turning and crashing back into the forest on the other side of the river with a great deal of noise.

Daddy and Grandpa point at a target in the river and both try to hit it with their lures.

Without a word to them, I turn and waddle in my snowsuit back to the car. Mommy opens the door, takes me inside where it is stinging warm. She brushes the melting snow from my face, removes my hat and gloves.

I'm warm. I'm happy.

© 2010 by David L. Williams, all rights reserved

In the heart of a campfire

2010-04-26T15:47:00.000-07:00

If I was honest enough to remember the whole truth, I’d probably recall some very uncomfortable or even miserable experiences while dirt-camping as a kid.

But why would I want to do that?

Anybody who intentionally spends hundreds of dollars plus weeks in excited preparation for the opportunity to sleep on the ground, live in a perpetual cloud of dust and mosquitoes, eat food from a milk-sodden, meat-bloodied, melted-ice ice chest, and to pee and occasionally poop into an open, fly-infested pit has no grounds for complaint on any level, least of all personal convenience.

These days, Carolann and I visit the great outdoors in luxurious, indoor comfort. We have an air-conditioned 34-foot motorhome with a queen-size bed, full shower and toilet, complete kitchen, and two TVs. It’s wonderful. It really is.

But camping, it ain’t.

My Dad had a big, unbelievably heavy canvas tent. It was bigger than some honky tonks I’ve been in and smelled almost as bad. He had to prop the thing up with a couple of huge wooden poles I think he bought from a circus fire sale. As far as I can recall, that tent performed no useful service.

If it rained, the canvas would soak through and drip on us long after the rain had ended. Then it mildewed.

If it was eighty degrees outside, it was ninety-five in the tent. If it was sixty outside it was forty-five in the tent.

By the time I started taking my son Jeremy camping in the early ‘80s, the equipment had improved dramatically. Our tent was lightweight nylon. It was the first of those now ubiquitous dome things supported by three long flexible poles. It didn’t have to be lashed to steel stakes in the ground by twelve ropes poised to grab your foot and trip you every time you walked to the outhouse.

The downside of my new nylon igloo was its height, maybe four feet at its tallest point in the center, which was fine for a kid but it forced me to mimic a horizontal pole-dancer, writhing and wriggling on my back just to get out of my sleeping bag, pull on some pants, and exit on hands and knees through the little flap at the front that was secured by three or four maddening zippers.

Like my father before me, I taught my son to build a campfire the old-fashioned way: with paper under kindling, under twigs, under sticks, all in fastidious layers beneath three logs wigwammed in the center. It was a thing of beauty. We would stand back in solemn appreciation of our half-hour handiwork before we lit the match. Me, with a proud fatherly hand on my son’s shoulder; him, scratching madly at dozens of festering bites on his legs and neck.

After Jeremy mastered campfire-building, I introduced him to “fire-starters,” those wonderful, waxy chunks of compressed sawdust that make it possible for any idiot with a Bic to start a campfire. Boy Scouts need not apply. My Dad would have refused to purchase them.

Dad taught me to fish, of course, just as his dad had taught him, in the fast and frigid trout streams of Wyoming. I wasn’t very good at it and, frankly, I hated it. But that’s what fathers and sons do. It’s tradition.

My kid broke the curse. Oh, I taught him and he caught his first fish when he was five or six. But the next time I asked him if he wanted to go fishing, he asked with a gentle degree of pity, “Dad, you know you can buy fish at the store, right?”

That finished the sport for me and I still owe him for it.

But I miss it all: the laughter from nearby families, the smell and woosh of a white gas-powered lantern sputtering to life, the crackle and smoke of a jolly campfire properly built of wood chunks gathered and chopped by hand.

I even miss the dirt.

In evenings such as those by the campfire, with no TVs, no smart phones or WiFi, we had no choice but to talk with each other about our daily personal lives, of fanciful, imagined wonders and deep philosophy, of past events shared and joyously remembered which made us a family, and of mutual hopes and dreams which we would then take with us, yawning and regretful of day’s end, into our sleeping bags.

Gazing at God’s stars through the open flap of our stifling canvas tomb, secure on the ground in mummy bags with our parents at our sides, we inhaled deeply the fresh and gloriously-smoky pine air, smiled to ourselves and closed our eyes to sleep the unburdened sleep of woodsmen.

Except for the mosquito bites, it felt good and wholesome.