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Editor's Roadside Journal

Do you give money to beggars with cardboard signs?

Chuck Woodbury -
By Chuck Woodbury Everywhere you go in big cities these days there are beggars standing on street corners with cardboard signs. They usually say...

The fake people of Kaycee, Wyoming

Chuck Woodbury -
By Chuck Woodbury I stopped in tiny Kaycee, Wyoming, to check out the local Hoofprints of the Past Museum. It's a good one, lots of...

Mr. Ed, the talking “elk dog.”

Chuck Woodbury -
Remember Mr. Ed, the talking horse of TV fame? It's entirely possible that instead of being called a "talking horse," he'd be called a...

‘Miss you Dad.’ Headstone message touched my heart

Chuck Woodbury -
By Chuck Woodbury ROADSIDE JOURNAL I lost my father nine years ago. I still miss him. I have questions for him he can't...

Fixer upper RV. Make offer (or not!)

Chuck Woodbury -
By Chuck Woodbury ROADSIDE JOURNAL I found this along state highway 196 just outside Buffalo, Wyoming. I know nothing about it, other than...

Spiderman is a wild and crazy RVer!

Chuck Woodbury -
By Chuck Woodbury This animated video is just too much. I'm not sure what its creator was smoking or taking, but whatever the case...

Don’t squat over Yellowstone toilets

Chuck Woodbury -
Not all people in the world use toilets the way we do here in America. Although most European toilets these days are...

Why I love small town newspapers

Chuck Woodbury -
By Chuck Woodbury ROADSIDE JOURNAL I love to read small town newspapers. For many years, I would buy one or two a day. The...

Cocktails delivered by drone, not waiters

Chuck Woodbury -
If you should work up a thirst at the lakeside beach in the Estonian town of Viljandi, don't waste your time standing in...

Mystery on the Colorado River

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury I love to visit small town museums wherever I go. History can be so fascinating. I love reading or hearing about...

My name is Chuck

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury ROADSIDE JOURNAL My name is Charles but I go by Chuck. I took the name Chuck when I was a teenager....

When I fell in love with writing, journalism

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury ROADSIDE JOURNAL I decided to earn my living as a writer only a few hours after my first day in my...

I like to visit cemeteries when I travel

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury ROADSIDE JOURNAL I like to visit cemeteries when I travel. You can usually glean sometime about the people buried there by...

Ziploc bag helps me remember my father

Chuck Woodbury -
By Chuck Woodbury ROADSIDE JOURNAL I was organizing some boxes the other day when I came across my father's hairbrush. My father died in 2008. When...

Our Earth from afar! If only. . .

Chuck Woodbury -
  Oh, if only if we could do what Mr. Mitchell suggests! Oh, what I would give to experience this view. When we went to...

Friday evening. Newsletter done. Whew!

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury ROADSIDE JOURNAL It's 4:40 p.m., Friday, June 23, 2017, and I am 99.9 percent done with this weekend's newsletter, issue 799....

Thinking about fleas and a bomber crew

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury I don't know why, out of the blue, I started thinking about fleas. It's odd the way some things just pop into...

Squirrel bridge saves them from slaughter

Chuck Woodbury -
    Back in the early 1960s, squirrel roadkill was epidemic on Olympic Drive in Longview, Washington. Local contractor Amos J. Peters had a ringside view...

Adventure park is an insult to military, veterans

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury I am offended by an attraction in the Wisconsin Dells. It's called the D-Day Invasion Adventure Park. D-Day, for the two or three readers who do...

Milkshakes come in one size: ‘Medium’

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury I hardly ever eat fast food. Four times a year I dine at McDonald's. Once every five years I eat at...

The evil of plastic. Beware: Photo is disturbing

Chuck Woodbury -
  This photo is disturbing. It's of a dead albatross chick at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific. Its stomach is filled with scraps of...

My ‘trip of a lifetime?’ No, no! Please!!!

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury ROADSIDE JOURNAL I cut this ad out of a magazine a long time ago. I pasted it up on our office wall, where...

Marilyn Monroe, the slot machine

Chuck Woodbury -
  I photographed this slot machine in Virginia City, Nevada, about 35 years ago. I wasn't sure who the woman depicted was supposed to be,...

Quick moving, photo-snapping tourists

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury A lot of vacationers and other travelers move fast, not stopping to see much, or if they do slow down they don't...

Funny small town crime reports

Chuck Woodbury -
  I was going through my old issues of my "on the road newspaper" Out West. I found these actual crime reports from the Feb....

She doesn’t look like a virgin

Chuck Woodbury -
  This beer is brewed in southern Utah, right near the entrance to Zion National Park. The Virgin River runs through town.  When I saw...

Dogs, dogs. . . wherever you look

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury Dogs are a part of RV life, even if you don't have one of your own. And when you travel full-time...

The bug that lives, poops and has sex on your face

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury Some friends and I were discussing reincarnation. I said I did not believe in it. But I said if I were...

The RV road trip is near death

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury EDITOR, RVTRAVEL.COM I have learned more about RVing in the last six months of full-timing than in the last ten years of RVing...

Secret alien spy post in my backyard?

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury I was poking around on Google Maps this morning when I saw this oval shaped object. My RV park is...

Sun gone. Now lightning, rain, hail, freezing temps

Chuck Woodbury -
  It's Thursday evening. We're holed up in Seligman, Arizona. Two days ago in Camp Verde, the afternoon high was about 80. Today, it never reached...

Mike the dog remembered in Prescott

Chuck Woodbury -
  Mike the dog is legendary in Prescott, Arizona. He lived from about 1946 to 1960. Nobody owned him, but everybody loved him. And he...

Ghostly burgers at Haunted Hamburger

Chuck Woodbury -
  In the ghost town of Jerome, Arizona, on the side of steep hill overlooking the town and far into the distance, is Haunted Hamburger, a...

My two recent encounters with Space aliens

Chuck Woodbury -
  Of all the salt and pepper shakers I have owned in my life these are the best. I bought them a few weeks ago...

Dogs that are cats, or is it the other way around?

Chuck Woodbury -
  I saw this local publication in a news rack in Prescott, Arizona. At first glance it appeared something was terribly wrong. Those are very unusual...

Lizard hunting at Camp Verde, Arizona

Chuck Woodbury -
  I've been hunting lizards this afternoon. There's a bunch of them in a tree by my campsite. I watched them scurry about for awhile...

The mail I get

Chuck Woodbury -
  I received this unsolicited email this morning: Dear Sales Manager, I would like to know if your company offers Crane Stops for sale. I would...

Gail gets silly at a rest area

Chuck Woodbury -
  Gail gets silly at a rest area along i-17 near Camp Verde, Arizona. Beautiful Sedona is on the itinerary later this week.  Also,...

Airplane on steroids? It looks like it!

Chuck Woodbury -
  That's Gail in the bottom right of the photo. She's standing next to a NASA "Super Guppy" now mothballed and on display at the Pima...

Do you dream of your parents after they’re gone?

Chuck Woodbury -
  My father died just a little over nine years ago. My mother died five months later. I was thinking about them last night, and I realized...

RVer’s tractor gets attention in RV park

Chuck Woodbury -
  Larry Dexter can't seem to get rid of this garden tractor no matter where he travels. The sign says, FOR SALE. Been sitting...

Stinky cow poop around Yuma

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury ROADSIDE JOURNAL Gail and I were driving on old highway 80 east of Wellton, Arizona. It's a service road these days along I-8. Yuma...

A talking, RVing bird named Picaro

Chuck Woodbury -
  Two rows from me in the Copper Mountain RV Park in tiny, dusty Tacna, Arizona, a bird named Picaro is singing the theme to...

In Arizona, men’s neckwear is different

Chuck Woodbury -
  In Arizona, when a guy wants to dress up, he should forget about a traditional (boring) tie. In Arizona, men wear bola ties.  Arizona, in fact, is the...

Free ‘pre-paid’ cremation? Huh?

Chuck Woodbury -
  I keep getting mail from the Neptune Society. That's the company that will cremate you after you die (but not before, of course) for...

RVtravel.com editor video message for Jan. 14, 2017

Chuck Woodbury -
  RVtravel.com editor Chuck Woodbury has a short message for the readers of RVtravel.com. He spoke a little about why he wrote about traveling to...

Brutal rainstorm and flooding, but we’re okay

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury It's been raining cats and dogs here in San Juan Bautista for the last week, causing flooding, road closures and power outages....

When I went to the Moon

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury, Editor and astronaut Everyone knows that Neil Armstrong was the first man to step on the Moon. Most of us know...

A bit of rambling on a Friday night

Chuck Woodbury -
  On the spur of the moment, Friday evening (Jan. 6, 2017), just before the newsletter was done, I sat down in my tiny office...

Really? Amazon warehouses in the sky?

Chuck Woodbury -
  By Chuck Woodbury I am continually amazed at Amazon.com. Sometimes I wonder how long other retailers will survive when Amazon is improving the customer experience...
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