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Desert Winds and Hidden Waters: Our Work Week at Camp De Leon
Our introduction to Camp De Leon came with an unexpected welcoming committee: relentless winds that howled across the desert at 25-30 MPH, punctuated by gusts hitting 55 MPH. I retreated to the truck cab for the day’s work, a mobile office that quickly turned into a sweltering box under the Texas sun. Not ideal, but
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A Day Hiking the Stunning Windows Trail in Big Bend
The relentless desert heat drove us back to the Chisos Mountains, where we decided to tackle the Windows Trail – one of Big Bend’s must-see hikes. At the visitor center, we encountered what would turn out to be the first character in our day’s story: a volunteer guarding the trailhead and ensuring everyone had enough
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To Big Bend
We left Carlsbad near sunrise, which was around 7 am in the Mountain timezone of New Mexico, but 8 am directly South about an hour’s drive away in Texas, which is in Central timezone. A quirk of the artificial boundaries we like to place on space and time. Our destination was a Hipcamp we had
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New Mexico National Parks
We stayed another cold, windy night outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico at the Preshistoric Trackways National Monument and so the day started out with a short hike there. This monument is quite different from others we’ve visited. It isn’t made up of stunning vistas or untouched wilderness. Rather, it’s only a few miles from
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Chiricahua Country
Our final morning in Tuscon was another damp one and after a breakfast of conches and coffee, we headed into Tuscon to stock up on provisions. Jocelyn is something of a food Co-Op connoisseur so our grocery store of choice this time was Food Conspiracy Co-Op in downtown Tuscon. After loading up on fresh veggies,
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Kofa to Tuscon
I’m going split up week 4 into at least two posts because we had a week off of work and did a ton of stuff. Probably too much ground to cover in one post since I tend to be a little verbose as it is. Our first order of business was to get out of
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Kofa Wilderness
After leaving Joshua Tree National park we were in for a bit of Interstate driving on I-80 to Qartzite, Arizona where we then headed South to Kofa. Quartzite is a quirky little town in the Arizona desert. It’s a destination for RVers who go there in the winter by the thousands for the mild temperatures.
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Joshua Tree
We spent our second week on the road in the Joshua Tree area visiting an old friend. The last time we were here was almost exactly 21 years ago on a college Spring break trip. At that time she had just purchased the property she still lives on and it was basically a raw piece
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Portland to Anza Borrego
In this post, I’ll be recapping our first 10 days on the road. It has so far been what we were hoping and planning for these last few, cold dark, winter months in Portland. It hasn’t been all sunshine and palm trees, but the rewards have exceeded the challenges so far. We started out from
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And so it begins…
Welcome to the Crooked Trail! To begin with, this blog will document a 10 week journey from Portland, OR through the Southwestern U.S., culminating with the total solar eclipse on April 8th in Wimberley, Texas. We’ll take roughly one month getting there and another month getting back. We depart 2/29/24 and return 5/11/24. We are
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The Crooked Trail 