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A year and a half after losing our beloved chihuahua, Pico de Gallo, our home still felt the quietness of loss. The spaces where water dishes, beds and toys once occupied wasn't the bonus we expected. It just looked empty. We missed bedtime tuck-ins and his chupacabra imitation during UPS deliveries. Suddenly and unexpectedly” is a phrase we often hear before burying a friend, something that happens far too often these days—but without warning, a little black bundle of puppy-love dropped into our laps and brought balance into our lives, filling the silence. So, if you were hoping for a story about careful planning and making sensible decisions… then you might want to lower your expectations right now.  The post Stellaluna: Hitchhiker of the Heart appeared first on Living In Beauty.

Happy Holidays to all! ✨and thank you for waiting for us. We’ve just returned from a three month European‑style sabbatical. We feel rested, restored, and just smug enough to pretend this was all part of a carefully executed life plan. In truth, our “surprise” 50th Wedding Anniversary trip to Vienna, Austria was launched by Beauty & The Beast, a bathroom faucet, and Billy Joel. One stormy afternoon while playing Five Crowns, Billy Joel crooned Vienna through the Bose. Carmen tenderly took my hand and flashed "the look" – eyebrow arched, sideways smile, the one that makes me wonder if she's Elvis' secret love child. This look has ended arguments, redirected life plans, and once caused me to apologize for something I hadn’t done yet. She said... "No more bloody knuckles for you. Let's do something crazy for our 50th wedding anniversary. In early Spring, we'll limp slowly up the coast to Vinnie's. His new place has secure Airstream storage. Then I grab our backpacks and call Uber, while you hand over the keys and that *gosh-darned Fix-It list. Thirty minutes later we're at the Sacramento airport heading toward our plane. Vinnie and Vienna! Whadda ya say?" She’d clearly been rehearsing this. Hey, 50 years of marriage is a big deal. Life has been good to us. We should celebrate. Fifty years together taught us this: love endures, homes evolve, and the right song - or city - can still change everything. The post Vienna Waits For Y’all appeared first on 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 Five: 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.