tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26948247192454691772011-07-07T20:50:44.068-07:002005: I left my spouse, my career, my home in Atlanta and a life I'd had since 1983. I signed divorce papers and fled to the Gulf Coast (my beloved old stomping grounds) to sit under ancient oaks and heal. Eleven days later Hurricane Katrina destroyed South Mississippi. Everything in my previous existence - in 2 states - was now gone. Devastated, I bought a vintage RV, packed up my rescued dogs and a handsome Flamenco dancer and took off. Here’s what happened next and what is happening now.Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.comBlogger231100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-85380525101182211512009-04-11T09:17:00.000-07:002009-04-11T10:10:17.883-07:00

In the last week I have found many things to enjoy about Austin and the surrounding areas and the 11th Annual Mighty Texas Dog Walk, to benefit Texas Hearing and Service Dogs was a definite good time for a good cause. Texas Hearing and Service Dogs trains dogs to assist Texans living with hearing or mobility challenges,and they do so free of charge, so community support is a must and donations

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-10215385101311437452008-11-17T12:15:00.000-08:002008-11-19T20:28:42.874-08:00

Okay, here's a bunch of questions I would never in a trillion years have an answer for if I'd not ever lived in a 29-foot rolling home with another human being and 3 dogs. Sometimes I think RV living is good training if you ever decide to be an astronaut. Except for the weightlessness thing, hurling through space at 17,000 mph and not having unlimited access to oxygen, it's probably not that

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-29605081986200173722008-10-25T18:03:00.000-07:002008-10-25T19:50:24.002-07:00

I don't know who took this delicious photo. If you do, let me know.John returned from New Mexico this weekend and brought pots and pots of red and green chile back with him. Hot, mild, medium, roasted and regional, my dearest covered the chile gamut on this trip and I was delighted to see him come home toting this treasure trove. This is uniquely New Mexican cuisine (note it is "chile" not "chili

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-60994010864511621992008-10-23T19:27:00.001-07:002008-10-23T21:13:39.784-07:00

Last year, for the very first time in our relationship, we carved a pumpkin. It was our attempt to participate in the general frivolity of fall and Halloween since we don't dress up. Part of that, I'm sure, is that John is a professional dancer and performer and I worked in theatre for so many years. Dressing up or creating a character in our household means going to work. There's no trick or

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-27124600529370149452008-10-13T16:00:00.001-07:002008-10-17T09:33:10.800-07:00

Note: I actually wrote this on Columbus Day 2006, soon after I started RV-ing/Adventuring, and thought I'd post it for Columbus Day 2008.----------------------------------------------------------------I'm a state park kind of gal. I frequent them like some people frequent yard sales or haunt the hippest night clubs. I love the relative solitude and natural beauty state parks offer, the hiking

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-87319295682086245052008-10-03T10:49:00.000-07:002008-10-04T19:09:44.847-07:00

The whole RV park has a haze hanging over it this weekend. But it's not fog and it's not smog. It's the multitude of meat smokers all fired up for the 12th Annual Pig Iron BBQ Challenge, held this year in Hoover, Alabama. To set it up and host thousands of attendees, they cordoned off 3/4 of the park, made us all move (I was sure it would be worth it) to one small section of the park, filling up

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-18182600018075751802008-09-28T18:41:00.000-07:002008-10-04T19:05:21.637-07:00

Photo from Wayne State Univ. 2004For the first and hopefully only time in my life I am walking up to numerous strangers asking the indelicately phrased question, "Do you have gas?"It's a valid question. I got to Atlanta on Thursday night in time for my friend Pat to inform me that Atlanta was in the middle of a gas panic, with severe shortages and outages everywhere. This is a city of 6 million

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-65234104640479671752008-09-24T14:05:00.000-07:002008-09-24T17:55:33.389-07:00

It's ubiquitous, it's unsolicited, it's sometimes unintelligible...and it's probably in your in-box right this minute. Yup, it's spam. Everyone, but everyone, hates spam, right? Well, not your humble RVing correspondent. I don't hate spam. Granted, no one wants to wake up in the morning and sit down at the computer with a yummy beverage and see 47 unread messages, 200 of which are spam. No one

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-69111715528635195862008-09-22T15:22:00.000-07:002008-09-24T17:58:40.202-07:00

Here's a dog with a job! He's part of the show at Gulf World in Panama City Beach, Florida, and gets pulled around the performance pool by a dolphin. If you look at this photo long enough you'll start hearing the Beach Boys. Meet Buddy. We ran across him when John and I went into a convenience store on our way to the beach in 2004. Buddy was pretty old even then and required assistance to get up

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-45491190738766374042008-09-14T16:29:00.001-07:002008-09-14T17:02:21.315-07:00

One of my favorite things to do when John and I take to the road: watch my fellow humans. The photo above was taken in Asheville, N.C. The one below at Miramar Beach, near Destin, Florida.This guy (below) played the accordian and his dog, Annie, sang along - in a very beguiling manner, I might add. You might see them at a street fair in St. Augustine, Florida, like we did.New York City in the

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-91189439672289519202008-09-10T16:42:00.000-07:002008-09-11T16:39:17.034-07:00

I found that there are some things I got to do while RVing that I wasn't able to do when I lived in a regular neighborhood in a regular house living a regularly scheduled life. After my mother died I found it most soothing to ride my bike late at night (midnight even) around the perimeter of the RV park in Hoover, Alabama. It was a smooth ride, paved and mostly well lighted. It was peaceful,

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-2939931102803398122008-08-29T14:22:00.000-07:002008-10-24T08:40:40.556-07:00

In some ways my life is now 3 years old - my new life that is, for it's been 3 years today since Katrina turned my world completely upside down. I saw so much destruction, so much quiet suffering, so much disappointment, heartache, fear and frustration following that storm that it changed me and my world view forever. There's little more disconcerting than having your entire emotional and

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-56943185329117230612008-08-25T13:33:00.000-07:002008-08-25T15:55:47.276-07:00

What's next? Locusts?Today Tropical Storm (or remnants of) Fay -- she of the recent Florida flooding and 3 landfalls -- made her way to Alabama just in time to knock us around a bit. We had just come in from Atlanta on Sunday and had not even set our bags down when the tornado siren went off. John and I looked at each other and he turned on the Weather Channel. Bad weather to the north of us

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-75600572708313552312008-08-16T09:01:00.000-07:002008-08-20T12:22:48.732-07:00

Photo: CCBitshakerWhere will it end.Well, let me tell you where it started: a state in the Deep South with one really big city and numerous rural areas - peaceful places where people and critters of all kinds managed to live quietly with relative ease. A place where you'd hardly expect one of the most famous creatures known to man to come from. A place where you don't expect legends to be

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-20098553924460493822008-08-09T14:32:00.000-07:002008-08-10T04:44:21.622-07:00

As we roll somewhat lazily toward the end of a very pleasant summer, I am remembering where we were as the season started. We were in an RV park in Shelby County, Alabama, called Cherokee , located by a lovely private lake. You can't swim or boat in the lake, which keeps things pretty peaceful but you can fish and it almost seemed like people did that around the clock. A path around the lake

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-58344961181965642922008-08-05T11:15:00.000-07:002008-08-09T09:31:16.532-07:00

I always encourage RVers or any fellow travelers to take a camera with them everywhere they go. You never know when you will come across something you must preserve and show the folks back home. These days, of course, you can always use your phone to take pictures of any unusual sights but I'm kinda old school. It's unnatural for anyone born before 1990 to go around pointing cell phones at people

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-84780898440917484502008-08-02T09:02:00.000-07:002008-08-04T05:25:46.071-07:00

The RV Dogs, Halloween 2007Our dogs have adjusted completely to living in our movable space. The couch has been covered in decorative plastic, been taken over by Grendel and Boomerang and as such, re-named "The Girl's Dorm". They sleep there during the long, lazy summer days and sit there in the evening and watch me cook, gazing intently, in case

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-73979658651199228602008-07-30T10:19:00.000-07:002008-07-30T16:52:28.532-07:00

Warner Bros "The Dark Knight" 2008In a vivid scene in the recent mega-hit "The Dark Knight", Heath Ledger as The Joker sets a well-ordered pile of millions of stolen dollars on fire. "I'm a man of simple tastes," he snarls at one of his co-criminals, who, not astonishingly, wanted to keep the money intact, "I like dynamite and gunpowder and gasoline, and they are cheap."I wanted to stand up and

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-73183406870927088832008-07-25T10:46:00.000-07:002008-07-25T15:52:23.209-07:00

If fat and cute is your thing, you can't get find anything fatter and cuter than these creatures. Even if fat and cute isn't your thing you will be enchanted the first time you meet the rotund and graceful West Indian Manatee. Want to see them in person? You can find them in many areas of the Southern U.S. during the warm months and it's fun to swim, snorkel and kayak around them (in a

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-2693528347481438192008-07-22T12:34:00.001-07:002008-08-28T12:14:39.178-07:00

Last night we had one of those fierce thunderstorms that seem to come out of nowhere. It was violent and sudden and the wind that came up was considerable. I can’t stress enough that you really have to watch the weather when you are RVing. In that way, it’s much like boating – ignore the weather at your peril. The sweet sunny day you enjoyed when you left your RV to go visit friends or a local

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-71125329516991114422008-07-20T19:09:00.000-07:002008-07-21T17:56:38.228-07:00

It's hot outside today, almost 100 degrees, and that has me thinking of cooler times to come.Let me tell you about autumn on the Gulf Coast, a glorious time to be in a glorious place. Let me tell you specifically about Perdido Key ("The Lost Key") in Florida. This gem of a beach town is directly over the state line from another great beach area, Orange Beach, Alabama. It offers gorgeous sand and

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-83388061964732550432008-07-17T18:39:00.000-07:002008-07-19T08:12:50.987-07:00

Oak Mountain State Park, Alabama“Do you realize”, John asked me one day, “That we have our Jeep registered and insured in Georgia, we have an Georgia address, we have our RV registered and insured in Florida and we have a Florida address, we have an address in Alabama, you see a chiropractor in Biloxi, Mississippi, I go to my doctor’s appts in New Mexico and we have a storage unit full of

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2694824719245469177.post-71802686014863851822008-07-15T19:58:00.000-07:002008-07-17T19:57:10.503-07:00

The question I get most about my decision to drop out of society for a while and live and travel in an RV is not "Why?" as I expected it would be (when I first embarked on this adventure I thought it would simply be a few months "vacation". I was lying to myself. I had no intention of coming back to my old way of living but couldn't yet admit it) but "How?" More and more people ask me, "How do

Therra Cathrynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14458553550316708924noreply@blogger.com0