Love Notes Postcard Project – Autumn Nouveau

Your theme for this quarter’s release is Autumn Nouveau! Here’s a sneak peek of what you’ll receive mid-October. (We’re not giving away too much so you’ll be surprised and delighted when you open your package!) In a world where we’re constantly prompted to optimize our lives, increase our productivity, and speed things up, here’s an […]

Diving deep into Carlsbad Caverns National Park

Carlsbad Caverns had been on our list for a while, so when we finally returned to New Mexico, we made it a priority. Getting there was relatively easy while camping at Brantley Lake State Park. The park itself was relatively nice, although quite a few trees have been cut down so if you’re looking at […]

It may be Glacier, but it ain’t slow!

Shortly after visiting Yosemite National Park, we headed north to Montana and Glacier National Park. For proximity, we stayed at West Glacier RV, which is an easy walk to Glacier village and as near as you can get to the main entrance. This enabled us to easily pop into the park, along with seemingly hundreds […]

Love Notes Postcard Project membership is officially open

Your wait is over! We’re thrilled to release our new project out into the world with a drizzle of inspiration, a dab of nurturing, and a dash of thoughtfulness. In a world where we’re constantly prompted to optimize our lives, increase our productivity, and speed things up, here’s an opportunity to slow down a bit […]

Stones of Yellow, and Red, and Orange, and…

Why yes, it’s our Yellowstone National Park Journal post. If you’re a fellow Airstreamer, start here with our Camp Airstream recap. We’d not yet visited Yellowstone National Park until the year’s Wyoming exploration, despite getting close while visiting Grand Teton several years ago. While on the way north from Jackson we hit a pothole so […]

The Very Grand Teton National Park

Boy are we overdue for some blog posts! Thanks so much for your patience. Let’s start with a quick return trip through Grand Teton National Park (gallery) early last summer. This time we were lucky enough to secure an in-park campsite in the Signal Mountain Campground. Aside from being at the front of the loop, maximizing traffic around […]

Our Re-Imagining of Holland Photo Arts

When we started working on the new hollandphotoarts.com, we didn’t realize it would take us a year to complete and share it with the world. But in the process, we rediscovered what mattered most: Perusing our work online should be easy and enjoyable. Information about our process, pricing, and philosophy should be visible and clear. […]

Enter Through the Gift Shop

Astute Oh Those Hollands! readers may have already discovered this, but we are incredibly excited to announce the Grand Opening of the official OTH Gift Shop! Featuring some of our favorite travel photographs over the years including our recent adventures, these items make the perfect gift for your friends and loved ones. And, of course, […]

Halloween is a BOO-tiful Time in NOLA

We’ve been only lucky enough to celebrate my favorite holiday in New Orleans once, but it is most definitely on our short list to go back. One of our dreams is in fact to walk/ride in the Krewe of Boo Halloween parade one day! It’s truly amazing and I say that having been to Mardi […]

That’s Top Notch, Baby!

Birthed one year after I was born (!!), Top Notch Burger in Austin, Texas is a true institution. Most famous for its starring roll in Dazed and Confused, it’s embraced its, now very retro, 70’s design. It even has retained their car hop service resisting the “pave over the parking lot” ethos that so many […]

Santa Fe Skies & Art Abound

We always enjoy ourselves when we spend time in and around Santa Fe, New Mexico. Not surprisingly, since we’re avowed foodies, there’s plenty to keep our tummies happy, which also makes us delighted to share some of our finds and recs with you. Our campgrounds for our month-long stay included the KOA east of town […]

Lounging in Lava Hot Springs

It’s hot outside and your mind is focused on just one thing: Getting and staying cool. So of course you head to Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. Now, the name doesn’t engender a sense of cold, does it? But bear with me here. This tiny Main Street-only town which also serves as a magnet for heat-oppressed […]

Sweet Sophia

Over of the toughest things about being on the road and our current lifestyle is missing family and friends. Happy Hour zooms help, but of course there’s no replacing face to face, hug to hug so we’ll take any and all opportunity to get back together when we can. This past Thanksgiving when we were […]

A Week at Camp Airstream – Yellowstone

Despite being well into our 3rd year in our Airstream, we’d never been to a rally or organized Airstream event until this summer. Color us chagrined perhaps, but the first two years simply exploring beautiful Colorado was its own reward. We sure made up for it with Camp Airstream — Yellowstone though!  The best part […]

My Holy Water

They say you’ll know you’re a plunger if after your first plunge, you emerge red skinned, goose bumped with teeth chattering, and immediately want to do it again. Hi. I’m Anne. And I’m a Cold Plunger. After hearing so much buzz about cold plunging, reading Katherine May in How to Winter, watching the Bad Sisters […]

Let’s Go to a Fair!

We shared some of the incredible rodeo photos Bill captured at Manassa, Colorado’s two-day Pioneer Days. But in addition to the rodeo and demolition derby, they also have a little carnival action that night. Since it’s starting to get into Spring Fair Season™, we thought this little selection might get you in the mood. In […]

New Orleans in a Week

This winter, while still in New Orleans, we “hosted” our friends m&g down from Virginia for a week of revelry, or at least of food and drink. Because they’re among our dearest friends, and because we could use an excuse—any excuse—to further our culinary research of the Big Easy, we set forth to design the […]

It’s a Sign

You’ve probably heard the saying “Keep Austin Weird”, which we definitely should keep doing, but I’m going to propose another unofficial motto, “Keep Austin Lit”. No, not in the 420, Mary Jane way (my nose has let me know that there’s plenty of that already), but in a neon sign way. We’re not talking about […]

Birthday Surprise: The Derailers at Albert Dance Hall

Annie always seems to come up with the best birthday surprises for me. I’d initially indicated a preference for a bottle of tasty single-malt Scotch as a birthday gift since space in an Airstream is limited and it was a consumable gift. But she offered me a choice: whisky or an heretofore unknown experience. Thank […]

Happy Mardi Gras, Y’all!​

Fat Tuesday is officially TODAY so we thought we’d celebrate the occasion with some of the festive and fun decorations we saw last month before we headed out ahead of the big snowstorm that hit the southern town. While a little snow doesn’t faze us too much, New Orleans is wholly unprepared for something which […]

Test your gear before you need it

Our first season with Ellie we camped in a gorgeous, tree-filled spot in Gore Creek in the White River National Forest near Vail, Colorado in early September, just as the mornings were getting brisk and the trees thinking about their winter break. At this point we’d had some practice boondocking, but this was the first […]

Get Your Ass to Creede

There are many, many reasons to love Colorado and the annual Donkey Dash in the high altitude mountain town of Creede is one of them. Every Summer the town’s population swells (during Winter the donkeys would likely outweigh the number of residents!) with spectators to watch runners and their donkeys climb the mountains through the […]

The breakneck pace of the Tour de Fat

As you can see below, racers donned their speediest outfits and circled, round and round, about downtown Fort Collins this summer. They celebrated bicycles and beer, the official symbols of the great state of Colorado.  It’s a high-profile race, and the costumes aided in their quest for endless circling amid friends—both new and old—to work […]

Coffeeshop Wisdom

Sometimes it’s just nice to get out of the rig and work in a coffee shop (or brewery or distillery!) for a change of scenery. One of our favorite Breckenridge coffee shops is Mountain View Coffee and in their restroom is this painted sign with a wise saying on it: Your mind is the garden,your […]

Telluride Balloon Fest

There are very few things that can make me get up on a Saturday morning (ok, any morning) at o’dark thirty on a 40 degree morning in Telluride in JUNE, but the promise of several hot air balloons lit up and cascading over the mountain valley town would be one of them. Oh, that and […]

Quiet Louisiana Mornings

White heron waitingmorning fog blinds the impatienta fish captured, snatch!

Broken Hearts in the Crescent City

We awoke this New Year’s morning, having slept in from reassuring two stressed-from-the-fireworks cats at midnight, to a text from a dear friend. Are you two ok?  Just seeing the news It took only a second to see why on nola.com with a story with weight far larger than my phone’s small screen size could […]

Christmas in New Orleans

Many of you may know New Orleans is our soul city. We met here for one of our first dates while living in different cities, and it’s where we tied the knot back in 2001 (the weekend following 9/11) on what would have been my late parents 39th wedding anniversary. We’ve visited several times over […]

Photo locations in this year’s holiday card

Without further ado, note that for a couple of these letters (at least when this post was written), the posts associated with that photo are still getting drafted. But stay tuned! They will be published soon. C – Tour de Fat bike parade in Ft. Collins O – Aspens in the fall hiking up Marshall […]

Aspens at Marshall Pass in the fall

Last year it seemed like we nailed autumn in Colorado, hanging in the SW part of the state just as aspens around the San Juan mountains peaked. This year sadly it seems like we’re a couple of weeks late. We hung out at Sylvan Lake for a week before heading south to O’Haver Lake, about […]

Everyone’s Trying to Hold on for 8 Seconds

Professional photographers know one (among many) adage: Half of getting access is looking like you belong there. That’s the tack I took to photographing the Manassa Pioneer Days rodeo this summer. Grandstand seats along with everyone else are rarely the best spots for making good photos.  Another adage is: If your photos aren’t good enough, […]

That’s *One* Way to Travel

We had a triple-threat of sorts in a recent camping trip to Chatfield State Park: Originally we booked it so we could see Gregory Alan Isakov at Red Rocks (Sunday & Monday nights!), but the timing also worked out well to finish packing up and prep our condo for sale and, while we were there, […]

The Wrong Kind of Excitement

We had a bit of a scare this spring. Anytime we ran a significant electrical load (like the microwave), we’d get wafts of that nasty electrical wiring burnt smell in the rig. When you’re in a confined space, like a boat or an RV, an electrical fire is exceedingly dangerous. On top of that, it […]

Houston We Have (Artistic) Liftoff

Since we were coming down to Texas for the total eclipse, we knew there were some places we wanted to visit. Houston wasn’t one of them (ha ha!), but alas we found ourselves there anyway thanks to the annual Art Car Parade. Unfortunately it was looong drive from Waco where our home was parked AND […]

Total Eclipse of Our Hearts

We knew it was a gamble, and we promised ourselves we wouldn’t be disappointed, but of course, we secretly held out hope that the dire news delivered by faux jovial meteorologists in the DFW area that cloudy skies would steal the show, would be wrong.  And “shockingly”, they were! The morning clouds slowly dissipated and […]

What’s a little snow to kick off full-time RV living?

Well, it’s official. We moved out of our LoHi digs for the last time and reached out for, well…this. Within days of the transition, we plowed right through three 30# tanks of propane while worrying about frozen pipes and huddling next to Ellie’s furnace (which seriously puts out). Cherry Creek State Park ultimately got 17″ […]

Finding contentment in unlikely places†

I awoke about 6:30 as the morning light careened across the kitchen island, reflecting into the bedroom. Developing discipline is hard for some—it’s hard for me—so I was trying to get back into my normal morning routine. Too often while living in Ellie I’d just head straight to the coffee, and the litter box might […]

My tripod, the walking stick

Winging it works pretty well a lot of the time. I held that attitude boarding the Zion NP Canyon bus at the midnight-dark visitors center. The full(!) busses seated hikers sporting walking sticks and waders, while other adventurers just wrapped themselves in layers of dri-fit that’d make any Coloradan proud. I was part of the […]

Art imitates life

We had just arrived in Navaho Nation’s Monument Valley in Arizona when we spied this Cruise America rental parked off to the side of the KOA office. My only wish was for it to have occurred just after sunrise to match the light. Alas.

Will the generator finally start?

Following the eclipse, while everyone else departed after lunch for the spires and buttes of Canyonlands, I unpacked the generator’s new controller, dragged the work bench (ne, picnic table) across the sand into Ellie’s shadow, and draped a large towel across to keep things as clean as possible. I had a mixture of dread and […]

What “high-clearance required” really means

The morning after the eclipse, we talked with a ranger inside Canyonlands’ bustling visitor’s center. We were looking for some place without the crowds we could do in an afternoon. They had just the ticket. A nearby road simply marked “HIGH CLEARANCE REQUIRED” (highlighted map below) led through 7 miles of Oh. My. God. four-wheeling […]

Eclipses always leave you wanting more

Eclipse day at Canyonlands National Park! The run up to totality is an odd mixture of anticipation and boredom as celestial bodies prefer their slow, considered movements across our celestial view. The light starts to turn…weird. It’s hard to describe. Almost like Ra patiently held out a gray camera lens filter between us and the […]

Fall foliage in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains

Honestly, there’s not much more to say about this, so we’ll let the pictures do the talking. Gorgeous scenery, and feeling lucky to be able to spend so much time in this part of the state for fall.

(Windy) Lakeside at Eleven Mile State Park

When the season’s wound down and hardly anyone (but more than you’d expect!) is out camping, it’s a fine time to go book those spots you really wanted to stay at last time but holy cow look at that the whole calendar’s full! Such was the case with Eleven Mile State Park, housing…you guessed it…Eleven […]

Rifle Falls

Colorado’s State Parks are, as you can imagine, pretty popular among campers. Rifle Falls (down the road a spell from Rifle Gap SP) is one of those where you need to be on it to get a space for your rig. You can see why.

Tie that shit down

If you’ve spent any time at all on a boat, like if you spent 12 years in the navy, you well know to tie shit down, lest it be launched toward you in the most unfortunate way. Normally ahead of moving campsites we’d have taken the litter box (literally, a wooden box with a cat […]

Squirrel!

Who knows what got these two to wake up and sit side-by-side looking at the window at…something. Did they want to chase it? Eat it? Let it inside? Only they know. And they’re not telling.

Was that an alarm clock? Sucks to be you!

Nothing really to narrate here. You can fill in the gaps yourself.

Fur Professional Services

If you’re ever in need of a pair of consultants with a particular point of view, Willow and Frankie are studied up and prepared to help you. Particularly if the engagement involves eating fish, sleeping in the sun, or studying the effects of simply lounging about.

A blue heron contemplates breakfast

Walking by myself downriver along the Uncompahgre River (near Ridgway State Park) this morning, I spied this rather uncommon blue heron, contemplating its breakfast.

Vast wildflower bloom in Crested Butte

The middle of summer, smack dab in July’s midsection, herald the eruption of wildflowers in Colorado. Crested Butte gets an outsized portion of this display, and Annie had planned already to be in that part of the state on the tail end of peak season. The mosquitos, on the other hand, still seemed fully peaked […]

Ellie at Dusk

It’s nice when you capture an image you end up using as your phone’s wallpaper. Lottis Creek campground (there are a few loops close to one another but at different access points) was absolutely lovely. We stayed at site 2 in the Park Cone loop for a week, with a 30a electrical connection. That was […]

Kayaking on Dillon Lake

One of the best parts of camping at Heaton Bay in the White River National Forest near Frisco is its proximity to Lake Dillon. If you can go without utility support, some of the sites have nice water views. If you’re needing electric and water, Loop C is not a far walk, and there’s a […]

Losing our dear Sadie

We’d just adopted kittens Frankie & Willow and were not looking for a 3rd. Except for Anne who feels 5 is maybe, possibly just enough. We first met Sadie during a shelter event at a local brewery. She was pretty thin and frankly looking a bit worn from nursing her first litter and it was […]

The light in our thunderstorms

One thing to note about Colorado weather, is it can be unpredictable, particularly in the mountains. It’s why if you want to hike a 14er, you need to start early in the morning so you can be off the mountain in case a (brief, yet somewhat common) afternoon thunderstorm rolls through. Rifle Gap State Park […]

I’m just going to nap here, thanks

Nothing really beats a snug, comforting space, irrespective of its original purpose.

Cats, meet Airstream

You find yourself in a small fabric carrier being bustled about in the back of an oh-my-god-what-happened-to-our-old-car Ford F-250. And you don’t like it. Such was the predicament Sadie, Willow, and Frankie found themselves this fine spring day. Like prisoners in a lineup, they glanced about nervously as we secured Ellie’s front door and prepared […]

Our first camping spot: Rifle Gap State Park

It was a relief to finally have taken Ellie back to Colorado after our fitful start last month. Now we just needed to remember everything we’d been taught. Thankfully we had presence of mind to video everything for reference. That saved us from an unknown number of problems. Preparing an arrival and departure checklist would’ve […]

Aaaaannnnd they’re off! Oh, um…well, not quite.

The snow is pouring down in Sandy, Utah, and we’re approaching the yellow…no, make that red…light. We’ve had our F-250 (Carl—we’ll explain later) for about a month, and this is the first time he’s been out in the snow with OEM tires. I gently press on the brakes and…we do the (soooo not electric) slide […]