By Chuck Woodbury
Editor, RVtravel.com

I’m home. It’s Wednesday morning at about 10 a.m., I glanced out my living room window an hour ago and this is what I saw.

That’s Mount Baker in the distance, the northernmost Cascade volcano in the Western USA. From the photo it looks like I live in a forest, which is partially true, but, well, not really. Beneath most of the trees are homes. The telephoto lens compresses everything. Yet, from my perch atop a hill here in Edmonds, Wash., the scene looks pretty much like what you see here.

If you have not visited the Northwest with your RV, consider doing so. There are campgrounds everywhere including many in National Forests, National Parks and in gorgeous state parks, some right by the ocean. I especially love those along the Oregon coast, most of which are open all year.

Beneath that gorgeous mountain in the photo you will find dozens of beautiful campgrounds, many in a dense pine forest or by lakes in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. U.S. Highway 20 leaves the ocean near Anacortes heading east, passes near Mount Baker, and then continues through magnificent North Cascade National Park where the road is closed in the winter because of heavy snow. There are dozens of campgrounds on or near the route. Really, for RVers and all other campers, it’s paradise.

Although most RVers prefer to camp in the Northwest in the summer, some, me included, enjoy doing so as well during the off-season. I love camping with my motorhome in an Oregon State Park right on the beach even in the dead of winter. You’ll likely need to put up with wind and rain, but the air is sweet, crisp and as pure as you will find. If you crave solitude, a walk on the beach either alone or with your special someone will soothe your soul and refresh your spirits.

Every region of the USA and Canada has its unique beauty. But here in the Northwest, with the beautiful mountains, forests and coastline, it’s special — and for the most part, very accessible.

What do you do when you buy a new car? For one thing, you trade in your old one. But have you ever wondered where your old car ends up? Used cars don’t last forever.

One day, your old car will die. If it dies in the city, it will be hauled to a junk yard. But if it dies in the country, it will be hauled nowhere; it will remain where it dies — along the road, in back of a store, or in a front yard.

Travel the backs roads as I do, and each trip you will see 30 dead deer, 60 dead jack rabbits, 3 dead coyotes, 34 dead snakes, 23 dead squirrels, 17 dead skunks, and 6,000 dead cars.
I believe that in 50 years people will consider our present day automobiles primitive. If you really think about it, they are already primitive. But they’re the best thing we currently have for personal transportation.

They are terribly noisy, especially when they are not running well, and they pollute the air. We can probably thank Henry Ford for his contribution to global warming. Little did he imagine!

Cars are also unsafe. Every day people crash in them. Hundreds of those people die. Others survive and spend the rest of their lives in wheelchairs. Still, we drive, because there is nothing better than a car for going when you want when you want.

Cars also break down a lot because there are so many moving parts. Auto makers have improved the performance of cars through the years, but in doing so they have made them so complicated that a backyard mechanic can’t do his own repair work anymore.

My old 1958 Volkswagen was a bit more powerful than a go-kart, but I could do a lot of the mechanical work myself. Now, with all sorts of sophisticated electronic gizmos, you need a PhD in mechanical engineering to figure out what to do when something goes wrong.

Someday they’ll look back at our slow, gas-eating, polluting vehicles and laugh — sort of like the way we think of Stanley Steamers today (you’ve heard of those, right?).

By Chuck Woodbury
Editor, RVtravel.com

That’s me in the picture. I’ve been going through my Out West photos again, from the years I explored the West for my “on-the-road” newspaper. But this photo is even before that.

I’d say I took this about 1987, back when I was writing magazine articles for whoever would buy them, which included some major titles like the prestigious Modern Concrete News. I can tell, looking at my pose in the pic, that I am freezin’ my little fannie off, so it was probably January or February.

It’s a self-portrait taken on a dry lake bed in northern Nevada. There are plenty of those old lake beds in the state. This one, like many others, is large enough to land a Boeing 747 and then take off again going the same direction. So go ahead and land your jet there if you have one. I remember racing that little RV around that lake bed at 60 miles per hour, probably singing a tune at the top of my lungs ’cause I knew there wasn’t any creature except rabbits and snakes for 50 miles. Most of the time, Nevada lake beds are totally flat, hard, and smooth as a new highway.

Right before I snapped that photo I took another one of me teeing up a golf ball and taking a swing. I’m telling you, that ball went forever. I hit a few balls and I recall I never found at least one of them.

I snapped the second photo of myself while pounding out words in a BLM campground along U.S. 50, near Austin, Nevada, probably on the same trip. That’s my first laptop computer and a battery-powered printer. And. . . oh, this makes me so nostalgic . . . that’s my old red coffee pot, from which I drank only the cheapest, baddest coffee (I had not yet moved to Seattle where drinking bad coffee is illegal).

AS I HAVE SAID BEFORE, that little motorhome was the biggest pile of man-made material to roll the Earth. It was a major leaker, making a rain storm both an outdoor and an indoor event. Its Dodge engine ran when it wanted, making each turn of the ignition key a nail biter. Still, looking at the photo, I feel warm and fuzzy all over, as in “Gee, I sure do miss those days, when I was a young guy, roaming by day looking for stories, and then roaming a rural tavern by night in search of a single cowgirl, but usually settling for a Budweiser.”

By Chuck Woodbury
editor, RVtravel.com

When I travel, I always have a camera with me. These days it’s often my iPhone, which takes remarkably good photos. I take photos of whatever interests me.

Sometimes people stare at me when I take a photo of something that they would never think to photograph. They must think me odd. They seem especially curious when I am taking a picture of a mannequin, which I do a lot. I figure those mannequin’s must be in the image of actual people, who modeled for them. I wonder who they are. When my daughter Emily is with me, she keeps her distance from me at such times to avoid embarrassment.

I like to take pictures of headstones in cemeteries. I can learn something about the people buried there and the area’s history. In ghost towns of the West you find many more children graves than you would in a modern-day cemetery. It’s obvious that times were tough.

Sometimes a particular photo isn’t very interesting all by itself, but when you put it together with another one, then it is. Here’s an example: I was exploring one of the small, Wild West-style casinos in Virginia City, Nevada where I spotted the “Ol’ Miner,” a human lookalike who talks after you put a quarter in his belly. He sounds like Roy Rogers’ pal Gabby Hays. I took a picture of him just for the heck of it.

And, then, perhaps only five minutes later as I walked down main street’s old wooden boardwalk, I came upon the Ol’ Miner’s real life counterpart who was posing with his burro for tourists. He was also seeking money, although he preferred dollar bills in his hand over quarters in his belly. Just like that I had two photos that I figured I could maybe put together later to make for a little story. And now I have.

MUSEUMS ARE INTERESTING PLACES to find things to photograph. I have photographed many two headed cows in museums and I even found a two-headed rattlesnake in one near Carlsbad Caverns. Until now, I have never shared the interesting photo to the right that I took in the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, Ariz. It appears to be an airplane. Well, it’s not just an airplane, but a submarine, too! The Russians first proposed such a craft in 1934: the idea was that the “flying sub” could land on the water close to an enemy ship, then dive to become a submarine and then sink the ship with its very own torpedo! The U.S. Navy considered such a craft in the early 1960s. This photo is a small model in case you couldn’t figure that out.

These are just a few of the thousands of things I have photographed in recent years. I plan to keep taking more photos, so stick around.

By Chuck Woodbury
editor, RVtravel.com

Before I became politically correct and nature-smart, I fed wild animals. I fed bears as a kid in Yellowstone. I fed deer in Yosemite. I fed blue jays. I fed gray squirrels. I fed chipmunks. I fed anything that was cute that wasn’t interested in eating me.

I remember the little chipmunk you see here. He was in a Forest Service campground near California’s Lassen National Park. He and his buddies were very friendly. No, make that very aggressive. They wanted my food. I was traveling alone back then without a computer, cell phone, internet access or even a TV, so — in other words — I was bored out of my ever-lovin’ mind. So hanging out with rodents was a quality way to pass time.

This fellow was not after coffee as you might think from the photo. Nope, he was after Cheez-It crackers which I had hidden inside the mug. He saw me put them in — he and his buddies. For you and me, a spectacular meal might be a juicy steak or some fresh caught salmon. If you’re a vegan then maybe some tasty sprouts. But for a chipmunk, the ultimate dining experience is a feast of Cheez-Its. That’s just my guess, of course. . .

For me, this chipper presented a good photo opportunity. I was a struggling freelance writer and sometimes I sold my photos to magazines. I sold this one, earning enough to buy some gas, which seemed expensive back then at about $1.35 a gallon. Hah! I’d take that again in a flat second!

I no longer feed squirrels or chipmunks or anything that doesn’t have a home or a leash. I sure as heck would never feed a bear. Nowadays, I just feed myself and sometimes my daughter or girlfriend when they are with me. When chipmunks come along and start giving me the eye I say, “Get lost, pal.” And that’s that.

I watched an old Hollywood musical the other night, “Meet Me In St. Louis” starring Judy Garland. The 1944 movie was set in 1903 as St. Louis prepared to host the World’s Fair.

In one scene, the family is gathered around the dinner table when Judy Garland’s older sister receives a phone call from a boyfriend in New York City (see photo). The phone, of course, is a very early model. As the young couple talks, he says to her in a gee-whiz kinda tone, “Isn’t it something — here I am in New York and I’m talking to you in St. Louis!”

That would have been 108 years ago. I chuckled because it was less than a year ago, after my daughter had moved into her dorm room in New York City, that during a video chat I said something similar (or at least thought it): “Isn’t it amazing that here I am in Seattle and you’re in New York and it’s almost like we are in the same room?”

During my webcast last Saturday, I talked about how, about 10 years ago, I was amazed when I was first able to access the Internet in my RV at a campground. I would just plug my cell phone into my laptop computer: the connection was far slower than dial up yet it seemed like a miracle to simply get online.

By then, using a cellular phone for talking was old hat. My first trip with one was in 1994, when I carried a big ol’ bag phone. I had to register and pay a fee each time I entered a new city. Still, it seemed amazing.

Today, I can make and receive phone calls from anywhere for a flat monthly fee. And even more remarkable to me is that I can access the internet at broadband speed, too, also for a flat fee. On my extended motorhome trip around the USA last summer, I was able to access the Internet almost everywhere. In the evenings, I would visit with friends using video chat: it made me feel very less alone.

Back in 1903, just making a long distance phone call seemed a miracle! Look how far we have come. What’s next?

I just came across this photo I snapped of it at Valley of Fire State Park in southern Nevada, which is one of the “reddest” places you will ever see and incredibly beautiful. I may have shown you this photo before, but I like it so much I would like to show it to you again. That motorhome was small, but that big rock right along the park road makes it look really, really small!

I think Valley of Fire is among the most spectacular state parks in America, and yet not well known outside of the Las Vegas area. You should visit. The campgrounds are primitive — but their settings spectacular. And they are very peaceful. One morning, out for a little walk, a raven flew over. I remember hearing the “whosh, whosh” sound of its wings as it passed. That’s a sound you don’t normally hear in our noisy world.

One of my favorite things to do when traveling with my RV is to visit rural pioneer museums. Most are not very exciting, but they are all interesting — old photos, antique plows, a replica of a kitchen from 100 years ago, maybe an old dentist chair complete with barbaric looking tools that always scare the pee pee out of me just looking at them.

But at many museums you can learn a lot about things you might never think much about otherwise. For example, I once visited the Barbed Wire Museum in La Crosse, Kansas. Now, maybe you think that barbed wire is a boring subject. Well, I beg to differ with you! When you drive around the rural American West, you see it everywhere. But what you may not know is how important barbed wire was to the development of the modern West and how its use ended the cowboy era.

Before it was invented, ranchers sometimes planted thorny hedges to keep domestic and wild animals apart. Then, In 1873 Joseph F. Glidden of Dekalb, Illinois attended a county fair where he observed a demonstration of a wooden rail with sharp nails protruding along its sides, hanging inside a smooth wire fence. That inspired him to invent and patent a successful barbed wire in the form we recognize today.

WHEN LIVESTOCK ENCOUNTERED BARBED WIRE for the first time, it was usually a painful experience. The injuries provided sufficient reason for the public to protest its use. Religious groups called it “the work of the devil” or “The Devil’s Rope” and demanded removal.

The Cole Porter song, “Don’t Fence Me In,” sums up the cowboy’s feelings about barbed wire fences.

Another good place to learn about barbed wire is at the Devil’s Rope Museum in McLean, Texas, which bills itself as the “Largest Barbed Wire Historic Museum in the World.”

This is the type of thing I learn when I am roaming around the countryside with my motorhome. I learn more history on these trips that I learn in books and it’s more fun. I was bored by history as a kid. Now, I can’t get enough of it.