On the Road with Adie

New Mexico

Thirty-one states and 20,000 miles under our belts. This has been our route since January 1st. That big northward spike? That was our now-infamous engine breakdown. We booked it southward and stayed in St. Louis with our now dear friends, then trotted east with the good weather, only to be waylaid by faulty brakes. We stayed with Saint Bob of Tennessee while he patiently saw me through the brake job. Then it was smooth sailing—until the master cylinder went out along the Mississippi coast. But what a place to be delayed.

Podcast: Shawn & Emma

Before setting off on our 49 state bus tour in our VW, Adie, we made a post on a Facebook forum asking for interview recommendations. This guy, Shawn Sullivan, messages us to ask if we wanted to be on his radio program called The Happy Trucker Show. We were on the program and instantly liked Shawn. As it turns out, he and his wife, Emma, own their own digital radio station, Happy Productions, out of Minnesota. Their logo is a cartoon rendering of their 1974 bus, Cosmo, hence their interest in what we were doing. Soon we appeared on their Afternoon Delight Program which is hosted by the both of them and they began to air our podcast on Wednesdays. At the end of October, we were in Wisconsin and decided to make the extra jaunt over to Minnesota to meet them in person.

West Texas

West Texas is bleak, my friends. Driving the last 60 miles out of Texas is a barren, hollow, desolate, scouring of the inside of your soul experience. Nothing but oil horses and RV parks for their workers, flat parchment land. The only notable features are the wire skeletons with electric wires swooping between them and spires with oil lights flickering against the nondescript sky. Still, like any desert, there are oases. Here’s some of our favorite spots:

Terlingua, TX

Google Maps is my favorite invention. I’d sit at my desk at that last miserable job I had and take Maps vacations—find a locale and start clicking through the route I’d take to get there, look at people’s photos, and read their reviews. (For those of you clamoring to return to office culture, let’s not pretend like wasting time wasn’t a large part of being in the vacuum of the office.) Anyway, I found this little town called Terlingua. As we drew closer, we learned it was fairly renowned and I had not, in fact, discovered it. An old saloon, and a shop, art stores, ghost town ruins, and BBQ. It’s what you would expect from a failed mercury mining city that revitalized in the 70s thanks to a bunch of hippies.

We went to Mexico!

We were right there on the border in Presidio and we figured, “How could we not?” So we went. Yes, every single Mexican person laughed at me for not knowing Spanish. Yes, I only had American dollars and, no, I did not notify my bank that I would be out of country so my card would not work. We crossed anyway. We sailed through the border with no issues (other than me not speaking Spanish) and ate a little roadside taco stand run by a young man named Oscar. Oscar knew English and his family thought it was hilarious that an American dare go to another country without knowing the language. Still, he apologized for not speaking better English—an apology I assured him was most unnecessary.

Support your state parks!

We love our National Park System. We really do. But they can be crowded. If a nearby National Park doesn’t offer a one of a kind feature like, let’s say, the Grand Canyon, try out the nearby state parks. Texas has some amazing state parks that are every bit as good as Big Bend. We have stayed at Garner, Seminole, and Big Bend Ranch. All of them are worth visiting and the camping fees are very reasonable.

The past is close behind

Podcast: Sam

We were driving through Wisconsin when the recently rebuilt engine in our bus, Adie, completely seized on us. Luckily our friends, Shawn and Emma, at Happy Productions Radio were a mere 250 miles away and their long-time friend, Sam Weyandt, at Dune Buggy Supply was not far from them. Even though we had never met Sam, we knew the bus would be in good hands. We had Adie towed and the engine swapped out. We sat down with him at Dune Buggy Supply in Minnesota on the day we picked Adie up.

Museum of Texas Handmade Furniture

This was a find. Originally, we had planned to cruise on down to San Antonio—see the riverwalk, take the Alamo tour. But a couple of native Austinites said the traffic in San Antonio was horrendous, which is really saying something after maneuvering the streets of Austin. Since we are wanting to take it easy on the bus and my heart, we stopped short of San Antonio at New Braunfels. I’m glad we did.

Texas so far

A giant fiberglass squirrel. An old dance hall on the outskirts of town. Nighttime camping along the river. LBJ’s boyhood home and the best view in all of Austin. It’s been a full week.