Author Archives: neongreenhat

Harper leaped down the rock face with the disregard of a barely one-year-old puppy, oblivious to a world that might bring her anything but play and kibble.  I scurried after her, narrowly saving the child from hanging her torso off the next ledge. Visiting the Sunday Gulch Trail on a Friday morning, I had somehowContinue reading “Sunday Gulch on a Friday”

“Are you sure?” Carolyn gave me a cockeyed glance as I pulled the Osprey day hiking pack from its cabinet. The sun only barely peeked over the horizon to let in a sliver of light. “Yeah, it’s beautiful out and I’m gonna do it.” I filled the three-liter water bladder before stuffing it inside theContinue reading “Is that an adventure?”

“LAURA BETH!!” I dropped my phone and lunged around the RV. Carolyn held back a snarling Bella, straining in her red harness.  Harper, in her other hand, bounded from side to side, using her big girl voice to call the campground’s attention. Neighbors enjoying their dinner edged away.  Walkers gave us a wide berth.  ItContinue reading “You made it a year, kid.”

“Sweetheart, you can’t have the cornbread.” Harper resettled her tufted rear on the linoleum, craning her two-tone chocolate brown eyes back to me for permission. I only barely resisted the wiles of my puppy dog. Harper is at once my joy and my daily annoyance.  Let’s be real.  I love her to pieces, but whenContinue reading “Redux, the Black Hills”

“Prairie dogs!” I jumped out of the Grand Cherokee and raced to the fence.  The bored critter eyed me with disinterest and shuffled back into its hole, but not before I netted a few blurry snapshots. We had stopped at a gas station just outside the Badlands National Park for a much-needed fuel stop afterContinue reading “Prairie Gal”

“It’s smaller than I imagined,” my roommate announced as we crossed the street to the Corn Palace of Mitchell, South Dakota. Our first stop post-Iowa was the fabled “Only Corn Palace” in the world.  It seemed our grand adventure had truly begun as we launched into our first entirely new state.  Travel day came inContinue reading “A Palace of Corn”

Christmas and Corn Weekend, those are our family’s set-in-stone holidays.  Annual gatherings of the family allow each person to see folks even for just a few hours. Corn Weekend might be a bit new, allow me to elaborate on this treasured holiday. Every year, my family celebrates “Corn Weekend”, an annual gathering of the now-scatteredContinue reading “A Treasure of Corn”

“What if I just kept driving?” I hit the end call button as the thought floated into clarity. Our annual Mother’s Day call was filled with catching-up on our socially isolated happenings, a welcome opportunity for the daughter not known for her attention to relationships.  Corn Weekend rapidly approached in two months, our annual gatheringContinue reading “Drive on.”