HMS Beangle

Welcome aboard! We're sailing across North America in our Bean Stalker teardrop trailer. Come share our journey.

Tag: Campground

  • Tin roof (rust optional)

    The weather hasn’t been too friendly here in east central Georgia these four weeks, but occasionally it’s been pleasant and we’ve tried to take advantage of those days. A few beautiful mushrooms have crossed our paths, although I think this one is my favorite. It looks almost silky, doesn’t it? Still not eating it. The…

  • Tallulah Gorge

    Well look at that. The first thing we noticed driving into our campsite at Tallulah Gorge State Park was a teardrop trailer in the site next to ours. (The second was that the previous campers at our site hadn’t left on time.) It made my heart happy to see another proponent of the tiny travel…

  • Chattanooga, Chickamauga, and Chance

    Grab a cup of something, this is a long one. We fairly raced south from Kentucky. The weather projections were looking quite bad across KY, with heavy rain and extreme cold in the forecast, even the possibility of tornadoes in northern Tennessee. Waking early, we slid well south to Chattanooga and set up camp for…

  • Triple Boone

    (Jeff said that my last post, a ‘Why can’t I sleep?’ special, sounds like everything was all done in a single day. It was not. It covered four days.) After leaving Indiana, we crossed into Kentucky and headed west for Bourbon Country, a little American Revolution history, and unknowingly a lot of Daniel Boone. While…

  • Either cold or wet, but not both please

    Although our plan is to chase the good weather, the reality is that poor weather is going to find us sometimes — especially since we headed south about two weeks later than we probably should have for those warmer temps. Luckily we’re sturdy folk and can tolerate some cold temps. We left Michigan in cold…

  • 19 Turkeys

    When I return to a region so full of family and friends, not a lot of pictures get taken. Sorry, but it’s always been this way. For nearly three weeks, we barely saw the inside of the HMS Beangle, as we curled up in the homes of others. Running water? Right there. Heat? Turned on.…

  • Sleeping in the Forest

    “I thought the earth remembered me, shetook me back so tenderly, arrangingher dark skirts, her pocketsfull of lichens and seeds.” From ‘Sleeping in the Forest’ by Mary Oliver It’s hard not to relax when a forest welcomes you with a warm, colorful embrace. Sylvania Campground on Clark Lake is a National Forest campground in Michigan’s…

  • It only took 7 years

    Back in 2018, coming off a couple years of doing triathlons together, Jessica and I decided we were going to run a full marathon. We laid out the training plan. We committed to it. We found our perfect race: Grandma’s Marathon along the Duluth waterfront. It was the right time of year, we’d heard great…

  • Rest and then rush

    We’ve been to some really lovely State Parks over the years, and one of the things I value most about them is that they tend to be spots of respite from a chaotic world. Since they don’t get the press of the National Parks, they tend to be quieter overall. And without The Big List…

  • Fort Sisseton Historic State Park

    There’s an app for that! Ok, the Fort Sisseton Historic State Park app is a bit out of date for current events (hello, two years?) but the audio guides are useful and full of interesting information. I especially enjoyed the selected readings from Captain Bennett’s and Sergeant Andrew Fisk’s writings. A quote that has stuck…