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Continue reading →: If my tombstone someday reads, “He tried,” I think that will be enough
My blog has visitor stats available and on some days I’ll check it and I’ll see that I have had zero visitors on a particular day. On big days, when I publish something, I might have 20 visitors. One day—I remember it fondly as June 29, 2023—I had 40 visitors,…
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Continue reading →: I’m high as a fly on Willie Nelson’s wall
Strange stone curiosities in the deserts of the American Southwest. Last night I bought a six pack of Goose Island IPA and drank 3 of them in a Walmart parking lot just outside of Zion National Park. Vince Neil Emerson has a song that I like a lot called “…
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Continue reading →: ‘Our F’in’ A Broke Off!’
Last Saturday, March 2, the winds were gusting to 70 mph as I drove into Las Vegas to see the Pinball Hall of Fame. Vegas is 35 miles from where I’m staying at Boulder Beach Campground, Lake Mead, which is just a few miles from Hoover Dam. Unfortunately, the pinball…
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Continue reading →: I figure there are about 10 billion pounds of boobs in the world
I’ve been in a funk for days, ever since those bastards robbed my campsite of, it turns out, $1,319, $81 short of my insurance deductible and therefore not reimbursable. But the paranoia they’ve left me with is the worst part. I’ve bought locks now for everything. I’ve locked my trailer…
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Continue reading →: I just got robbed while camping
Last night I got robbed on BLM land outside Joshua Tree National Park. I’d gone for a hike about 4 p.m., and after grabbing dinner I returned to my campsite at 7:45, so there were perhaps 90 minutes of darkness when it likely happened. I’m basically in a huge open…
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Continue reading →: The Writer’s Block
This whole neighborhood is littered with writers. My agent, always trying to inspire me, texts me: “As though some magic would happen, that some magnificence would spring forth from them, he began to move his fingers… Onto a world of white possibility now spilled ink, digital ink, not yet wet…
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Continue reading →: Life is ultimately a life-losing endeavor
I’m feeling irritable today, restless. The weather has been cool with rain and I’ve been indoors all day—a mistake I should have avoided by doing something away from the camper before the sun went down. The camper is too small a space to contain a person without the aid of…
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Continue reading →: Strange shadows grace this land
The part of my trip where I half planned out where I was going has seemingly come to an end and I’m basically winging it week to week at this point. I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did—I’m just not much of a planner. After a week in…
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Continue reading →: Adam like smash thing with rock
Loneliness has finally caught up with me the last day or two. I haven’t seen a friend in five weeks, which actually isn’t all that unusual for me even when I’m home. I just don’t seek out social interaction much, though I enjoy it once I’m in the situation, but…
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Continue reading →: This is not a great post, it’s just what I’ve been doing
Yesterday I arrived in Joshua Tree National Park, the southern section at Cottonwood Campground. It’s a huge park, and ironically I’ve yet to see a Joshua tree because they don’t grow in this part of the park, which is entirely a different desert than the northern and western portions 50…
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Continue reading →: They just kept jumping stuff and ignoring me
I left Tonto National Forest in Arizona on Thursday after 13 nights there. It had rained for 3-4 consecutive days because of the CA “atmospheric river,” so that cut down on my activities and the trailer had me feeling cooped up. Eighty square feet is fine if you have the…
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Continue reading →: The birds chirp in happy affirmation of my nakedness
This evening I took an outdoor shower. My Rpod camper has a shower head on the outside and it came with a little fabric pop-up shower that springs right up when you take it out of the bag—surprisingly roomy enough for 2-3 people if I can find some adventurous campers…
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Continue reading →: I rarely feel alone when I’m outdoors
I have a tendency to excessively anthropomorphize. Once, in my younger, more experimental days, I took some mushrooms and had a 20 minute conversation with a Hibachi grill that was both adorable and enlightening. Tonight I hiked among the saguaro cactuses in Tonto National Forest, where I’m staying at Tortilla…
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Continue reading →: White Sands National Park – Rarity, oddity, and baffling beauty
I’m not sure where I heard White Sands National Park had 700 foot sand dunes, but the dunes were 60 feet high or so, quite the difference. Since I already wrote about the dunes potentially being 700 feet high, I thought about lying about it here, then if anyone ever…
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Continue reading →: Follow along as I desecrate the west
I left Big Bend this morning and after 400 miles I arrived in time for sunset at Oliver Lee Memorial Park, New Mexico, about 20 miles from where the first atomic bomb was tested in 1945 near Alamogordo. I’ve already sprouted a tail, which I’m not too fond of, but…
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Continue reading →: This isn’t a very good post
Tomorrow will be one year since I left on my first work-from-the-road trip with my Rpod camper, which lasted from Jan. 26 to March 31, 2023. This year I left on Jan. 4 and I’m shooting for returning to Minnesota the second week of April, just in time to do…
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Continue reading →: Criteria for determining whether you are an adult
I’ve never really felt like an adult. I still feel mostly like a kid who has to do adult things like not have recess time on some days and make money to live. Meanwhile, there are people who seem very adultish to me, like doctors, who are saving lives, or people…
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Continue reading →: My Sheclopsborg is out there somewhere
The night sky at Big Bend National Park inspires awe and imagination. Sometimes here at Big Bend National Park I look up at the night sky, at the thousands of stars that I can see and the trillions and trillions that I cannot, and I think, “There’s someone out there…
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Continue reading →: Poor decisions in aisle 3
On the plus side, when you’re camping in January there are almost no bugs, including mosquitos, the bane of humanity. On the minus side, even though it’s generally warm here in Big Bend National Park (75 yesterday, 70 today), it’s still winter, and that means many of the trees have…
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Continue reading →: Anything looking to tap Big Bend National Park cacti for water is likely to first pay for it in blood
The Chihuahuan Desert is full of pointy things that want to stab you. There are more kinds of cacti than I can keep track of, but I snapped a ton of photos of the bizarre little creatures, which must develop their points because they retain moisture and moisture here is…
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Continue reading →: Is a fish a fish? Big Bend and the border wall
I’m about 300 feet from Mexico in Big Bend National Park, right on the Rio Grande. Tomorrow I might fish, but if I catch something, I’m not sure how to tell if it’s a Mexican fish or an American fish, and if it is a Mexican fish, do I have…
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Continue reading →: Pale white dot
The camper is rocking today for all the wrong reasons. Fifty mph wind gusts have been sending the sands of Monahans Sandhills State Park skyward since early afternoon, and by 4 p.m the sun’s glow had been so obscured that it looked like nothing more than a pale white dot.…
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Continue reading →: An excruciatingly beautiful day
I didn’t make it dune sledding today but I did see the sun rise. I can’t tell you the last time that happened. I’m not a morning person, and despite my best efforts I don’t think I’ll ever be one. My body and brain argue about which likes it least,…
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Continue reading →: Jan. 5-7 – I high-fived a guy
“Customer number 7, your shower is ready,” says the overhead intercom at a Love’s gas station truck stop along highway US-69 south in Oklahoma, though I might still be in Kansas. I’m not sure where I am. I pulled in at midnight after 11 hours of driving—700 miles from Minneapolis…
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Hi. I’m Adam Overland, a writer based in Minneapolis. These are the meanderings of my muddled mind. I’ve written humor columns for various print publications, so naturally that’s dead and here I am, waiting for the last gasp.
