Wade Rathke:

New Orleans     The President is still running and running hard against immigrants and immigration, even though the issue has now fallen out of the top ten concerns for the American public. It seems a classic case of fighting the last war, rather than the current war, when Americans are focused on the cratered economy and […]

New Orleans     What a great birthday present – happy birthday to me!  Kris Kobach was defeated in the Republican primary in Kansas in his latest bid for another elected job, this time vying for an open seat in the U.S. Senate.  That wasn’t the only great news from the primary elections, but it makes […]

New Orleans     We would all love to simply believe that the police are there, and have always been there, as the slogan goes, “to serve and protect.”  Jill Lepore, the noted Harvard historian and frequent New Yorker indefatigable and invaluable contributor, in a recent piece in that magazine detailed in brief the history of […]

New Orleans      In yet another concern, with the US election looming ever closer, is a new report that Commerce Department officials and others around the White House are trying to speed up the already troubled census count in order to have it finish early.  This is a surprise obviously since the Census was hampered […]

New Orleans      We humped the highway back home through Texas.  It was a great trip.  It was time.   We have some observations for what they are worth. We read that the governor of New Mexico is angling for a job in a potential, hoped for Biden administration as the head of the Department of […]

Decatur, Texas     In the predawn, the three-week long veteran night clerk at the Motel 6 along Highway 287 in Decatur, Texas north of Dallas confirmed, “it’s rough out here.”  Looking for a cup of coffee, walking back from my truck, I mentioned that I had inadvertently woken up two different carloads of people sleeping in […]

Springer, New Mexico     Breaking camp on the East Fork of the San Juan River, we dried out our gear and were off again.  Chaco caught and released a small brown trout in the San Juan as we dodged tubers going down the river towards Pagosa Springs, then both jumped in for a cold moment […]

Pagosa Springs   In Durango, Colorado, we felt like we had struck gold, having hauled out bikes across Texas and New Mexico.  We stumbled, almost literally, onto a bike trail that had seemingly been recently completed along the pretty little Animas River that runs through the town.  We, meaning my son and I, knew it was […]

Durango    American national parks and monuments are one of the special things about the United States, but there is no park more unique and extraordinary in innumerable ways than Chaco Culture National Historical Park.  Chaco Canyon was one of the first national monuments.  Devil’s Tower in Wyoming was the first designated by President Theodore Roosevelt […]

Grants, New Mexico      No camping allowed at Chaco Canyon or what is more formally known now as Chaco Culture National Historical Park, nor could we cross the Navajo Reservation to get there, given the curfew and lockdown from 9PM Friday evening until 5AM Monday morning.  All of which made Grants, New Mexico, a former […]