Living In Beauty

First, you should know that we're okay! Second, the beauty of our campground hosting adventure is that we got out of it alive – but it was a close one. After fourteen months of pain, denial, healing and stewing over what could have been, we are finally able to share our sorry work-camping story without having to post a red FOUL LANGUAGE warning at the top of the page. We'd hoped to just keep it quiet, move on, nurse our wounds, wash our mouths out with soap and pretend it never happened. But trauma doesn't work that way. If you don't "go there" it will come and get you. If what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, then we hope our story helps others. The post Campground Hosting Almost Killed Us appeared first on Living In Beauty.

In Texas, finding yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time can end in tragedy, and finding yourself in the right place at the right time is a blessing. This is why we call it adventure. Twenty-five miles south-east of downtown Amarillo – where Pico took his last breath – we retreated into a hole in the ground called Palo Duro. Texans say this is the most scenic area of the Panhandle. Palo Duro is the second largest canyon in the United States. Click the "Continue Reading" button below for some beautiful canyon photos. The post A Palo Duro Goodnight appeared first on Living In Beauty.

Today is our 3,287th day on the road, and the first day of our 10th year of Forever Camping in our trusty rig, Beauty and The Beast, with us since Day One. Nine years ago, living mobile held more mystery and intrigue. Today, house-free lifestyles are almost as normal as overpriced houses. 😉 Wherever Living in Beauty goes, we receive positive vibes, but occasionally, an unsolicited whopper 😏 pops outta nowhere. Here are the top twenty whoppers we've heard first-hand about full-time travel. The post 20 Whoppers About Full-Time RV Travel appeared first on Living In Beauty.

This seven-chapter series about our 9-month Civil Rights Trail RV road trip – an official NPS trail launched in 2017 with more than 100 sites of interest in several dozen locations across the United States – has come to an end. Until our Civil Rights Trail Series began, our subscriber numbers always increased with every post. The big shocker is hundreds of followers canceled their Living in Beauty subscription during this series! Perplexing? Yes. Humbling? Yes. Fortunately, you are still here and we value your interest in our journey all the more. We encountered disturbing revelations and uncomfortable truths on every RV stop along The Civil Rights Trail. Yet, our faith in America is renewed! The post Civil Rights Trail – Chapter Seven: Final Thoughts appeared first on Living In Beauty.

“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.” - A.A. Milne, creator and author of Winnie The Pooh Some of the world's greatest stories involve bridges. Building bridges... capturing bridges... crossing bridges... and lighting them afire. For better and worse, bridges establish challenging and sometimes incompatible connections. "Burning Bridges" can mean a bad decision made in haste or it can mean a deliberate act of self-renewal. Every bridge crossing is an epochal moment, a promise to transport you into the future. Beauty and the Beast are our Bridge to Adventure, our Boredom Evacuation Plan. The post All The Bridges I Have Known appeared first on Living In Beauty.

In the late 1960's in California, I lived near the beach. Beaches were a place to chill, play volleyball and wax your board. But the song "Galveston" introduced me to a completely different idea where the beach was a place of poetry, mystery and romance, a beach you must see to believe. Galveston Island State Park is 'on-the-way' to nowhere but Galveston, a barrier island at sea level with only three roads into and out of the 27-mile long island. Click the "Continue Reading" button below to read about this beautiful and magical place. The post Campground Review: Galveston Island State Park – Galveston Island, Texas appeared first on Living In Beauty.

The art of biscuit making is a tender process where contrasting ingredients are gently coaxed into an improbable friendship. No two biscuits are exactly alike, but a good biscuit is something you can give yourself wholly to, even while eyeing the next one. Satisfaction is elusive. There's always plenty and never enough. Yeah, I'm talking about The Blues. The Blues sweet-talks electrifying joy and benumbed pain into a soul-satisfying concoction and lays it all out on the table. Come and get it. Blues and biscuits. No one does it better than "King Biscuit" in Helena Arkansas, one of the best Blues festivals in the world. The post All Hail The Good King Biscuit! appeared first on Living In Beauty.

What took us so long to BRP? Well before before Day One of this Airstream adventure – in response to one of our earliest posts, Tell The Beaubeauxs Where To Geaux – Living in Beauty followers have advised us to visit the BRP: Blue Ridge Parkway. Then, for more than seven years, we drove over the BRP, under the BRP and around the BRP, until... Bingo. We finally hit the target and gave the Blue Ridge Parkway the full focus of our attention for the entire month of July. At last, we understand why the popular Blue Ridge Parkway is called “America’s Favorite Drive." Don't ask if we saw this or that, just ask us how it made us feel to be there. The Blue Ridge Parkway is a vacation for the senses, a re-boot for the ol' neurotransmitters– The post Sweet Surrender🪽The Blue Ridge Parkway appeared first on Living In Beauty.

Dad was born in 1919 into a Louisiana factory-working family who barely made ends meet. He joined the navy on his 18th birthday. Back in the 1950's and 60's, a kid could run loose in Louisiana while visiting relatives throughout the state. Even in New Orleans, I was allowed to go anywhere I wanted except Bourbon Street because my Aunt Marie said, "You stay outta dat mess young man!" A few years ago while passing through Louisiana after a major storm, we pinned Lake Charles on the Living in Beauty list of places we like to explore. Even in that beat up condition, the region peaked our curiosity. Our research turned up Sam Houston Jones State Park. The post Campground Review: Sam Houston Jones State Park – Lake Charles, Louisiana appeared first on Living In Beauty.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. calls Montgomery, Alabama, "The Epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement" in his book, The Black Church: This is Our Story, This is Our Song. In 1955, Martin Luther King Jr. was the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery when, Rosa Parks , just down the street, refused to surrender her seat on the bus to a white passenger. Rosa Parks bravery – in response to the brutal murder of Emmett Till three months' earlier – activated the Civil Rights Movement. With so much to learn and see in the Montgomery area, we easily filled two weeks with sightseeing, museums, restaurants and lectures. Here we will share our visits to The Legacy Museum, National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Rosa Parks Museum, Freedom Rides Museum, Civil Rights Memorial and Center, Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge, the Capitol Building, and the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site. The post Civil Rights Trail – Chapter Six: Montgomery, Alabama – The Epicenter of The Movement appeared first on Living In Beauty.

We recently shared the post, The Magic of Number Nine, our completion of 8 years of full-time travel and the start of our 9th year. Today is another milestone: 3,000 days on the road, as we live in Beauty. This big day conjuncts with my 70th birthday. Yep, I've hit the big seven-o today, October 4th! How has traveling 3,000 days changed us? Click the "Continue Reading" button below to read about our renewed faith in humanity, respect for culture, admiration of the landscape, and appreciation for American languages and dialects. The post 3,000 Days on the Road appeared first on Living In Beauty.

We could be in New Orleans right now. Journaling our travels is like a two-fer. First, we get to go there, and later while creating the blog, we kind of get to go there again to say a proper goodbye. But, whenever we think about New Orleans, it's not about closure, it's about planning our next stay. Something keeps calling us back to The Big Easy. Each time we return we feel more like locals with a better understanding and appreciation for the cuisine, the music, and the most unique cultural history in America. The post Civil Rights Trail – Chapter 5: New Orleans appeared first on Living In Beauty.

We're here! We're ok! You haven't heard from us in a while, but that's because we've been out adventuring. Oh boy, have we been adventuring – but more about that later. For the next few ... however long it takes ... I will be handling the blog solo. That's right, Living in Beauty will be the "Jim Show" until Carmen writes a first draft of her screenplay. Living in Beauty isn't just sun-kissed scampering these days. We've been busy. Beauty is serving as Carmen's writing retreat and my comfort station following a short stint as a camp host. As we age, we don't want to lose the feeling that every day is a deeper plunge into beauty in every color and dimension, for as far as the eye can see ... The post Olly Olly Oxen Free appeared first on Living In Beauty.

Today we start our 9th year traveling full-time in our 2001 30' Airstream. Grooving on numbers and designing colorful infographics based on analysis is my thing – not so much for Carmen. Every Living in Beauty Anniversary, she steps aside as I release the pretty shiny numbers. Even if you don't like numbers, you can depend on them. I mean it doesn't seem that long ago since we left Fiddler's Cove on a beautiful summer day in 2016 ... .. and here we are, still Out There in 2024, wrapping up 8 years of freedom of movement, living wherever we want whenever we want. A lifestyle widely known as "Living The Dream," which we call Living in Beauty. We're looking forward to a fantastic and adventurous, yet slower and more immersive 9th year. But, today, we're looking back at what we've already experienced in our first 8 years of full-time travel. The post The Magic of Number Nine appeared first on Living In Beauty.

"What's the most amazing place you've ever seen?" We're asked this question so often we should print the answer on our t-shirts. We always respond with something impressive: "The Canadian Rockies," "Autumn in Vermont," "Yukon," "Denali," "The Outer Banks," "The Upper Peninsula," or "Canyonlands!" And, with all sincerity, any one (or every single one) of those responses is true. But, in the course of a passing conversation, it's way too blunt to surrender the most complete and truthful answer: "The most amazing place on Earth is ... right here, right now." If nature can explain the universe and our place in it, then Cane Creek Park served us well for our two week maximum stay. The post Campground Review: Cane Creek Park, Waxhaw, North Carolina appeared first on Living In Beauty.

In honor of the upcoming Juneteenth National Independence Day, we are publishing our latest blog post on our Civil Rights Trail journey in the deep South. As we drove north toward Mound Bayou, on our way to the King Biscuit Blues Festival, we expected to visit a Museum, but we soon discovered that the entire town is a museum. If you've ever heard of Mound Bayou, then you are the exception. Former slaves, left to their own resources, built a city that actually thrived all the way into the Civil Rights era... in Mississippi. Mound Bayou is a remarkable story of Brothers – the Davis brothers and the Montgomery brothers, who knew each other almost intimately, whose children played together and studied together, yet shared nothing in common as they worked side-by-side to opposite ends. This is a story for our time. The post Civil Rights Trail – Chapter Four: Mound Bayou, Mississippi appeared first on Living In Beauty.

"So, what's it like to live in an Airstream?" The answer to that question changes about every two weeks. The short answer is, "It's magical." We just released a short documentary about living in Beauty, pursuing moments that add up to dreams. The post A Day in Beauty appeared first on Living In Beauty.

Merging onto The Blues Trail from the Civil Rights Trail and the Emmett Till Memorial was effortless, and necessary. We've heard that when life gets heavy, The Blues can soothe woes. It was almost Opening Day of the annual Clarksdale Juke Joint Festival, and we needed to blow off some steam. The post Civil Rights Trail – Chapter Three: Juke Joint Festival – Clarksdale, Mississippi appeared first on Living In Beauty.

Our Civil Rights Trail tour began with the Emmett Till Memorial – a good place to start, for several reasons. First, the murder of Emmett Till launched the Civil Rights movement. Second, our destination for the night, The Emmett Till Intrepid Center was a scenic Sunday drive from Dad's house in Decatur, Mississippi. Third, it was Spring – the most beautiful season in Mississippi – when it is customary to reflect on new beginnings, redemption, and reconciliation – these are ideal conditions to immerse in the life-and-death story of Emmett Till. The post Civil Rights Trail – Chapter Two: Emmett Till appeared first on Living In Beauty.

Every year of Living in Beauty is memorable and different. Some years are spectacular and adventurous from start to finish. Other years are simply focused on relaxing color and scenery, or romance and celebration. Spring, Summer, and Autumn '23 on The Civil Rights Trail with side trips through The Great Smoky Mountains and The Blue Ridge was definitely our happiest year on the road. I understand if you think I misspoke. How on earth can nine months of immersion into the story of a people's bloody struggle to restore and maintain their lives, dignity, faith, and patriotism, against all odds, be a happy thing? Honestly, we're still trying to figure that out. The post Civil Rights Trail – Chapter One: Introduction appeared first on Living In Beauty.