On the Road Again - Adventures from an Empty Nest

We have stalled out – in the best of all possible ways.   Joe and I spent the month of March running from wind and rain, moving every few days.   Everywhere in Spain and Portugal, it seemed, high winds and torrential rains arrived just after we did.   Brief moments of glorious sunshine would get our hopes up for spring, and the arctic winds would blow in again.   Locals and fellow travelers bemoaned the “worst March ever” in Europe.   It hasn’t been too bad, really. Armed with our iPhone weather app, campground finder app and good GPS (thank you, Diane), we have aimed ourselves for – and found – the brief pockets of warmth and sunshine before the cold found us again, forcing us to move on.   We’ve walked miles every day, visited medieval towns and castles, explored Moorish history and strolled along the beaches – often in our jackets, scarves and hats. All three of us had birthdays – March 8 (Joe), 21 (Jacob) and 25 (me). A week ago (and still), so...

We are continuing to travel through amazing places, with no plans or preparation, and finding it a really fun way to live. Last night Joe discovered that we were camping within three miles of some of the oldest cave paintings known – in the Maltravieso Cave in Céceres in central Spain. The earliest painting in the cave – a hand outlined in red – has just been found to have been painted by Neanderthals, shaking up science's assumptions about humans and art and creativity  (good article here) !  From the article:  "The team analyzed the drawing of a hand outline made 66,700 years ago in a cave in Maltravieso in Spain's Cáceres province; a mineral deposit covered in paint on the wall of a cave in Adales in Málaga; and a line symbol, similar to a ladder, drawn at least 64,800 years ago in a cave in La Pasiega in Cantabria. These are the oldest known artworks on the planet." The cave itself, re-discovered by modern humans after a mining blast in th...

Yesterday, I watched live Facebook streaming of the Charlottesville student walkout from a parking lot in Fátima, Portugal, the town where, in 1917, three teenagers reported that they had seen a vision of the Virgin Mary.   Today, thousands of pilgrims pour into Fátima every year because they believed those young people.   I can only hope that the young people today who see a vision of a nation where they can be free to go to school without the fear of gun violence will be heard, too.   That is my fervent prayer. I am writing this from a tiny campground high in the mountains of rural northern Portugal. It is really tiny.   I mean, we are the only campers, and the man at the desk went home last night and left us here behind the locked gate.   To get here, we drove up a steep, switch-backing, narrow drive that certainly didn’t look like it was leading to anything.   But at the top we were greeted by the very nice manager and his enormous German sheph...

We are in Portugal, and the tree peepers are celebrating the arrival of spring!   It’s still cloudy, and rained a fair bit today as we drove from Seville, Spain, to Albufeira, but the frogs know that there is no turning back toward winter now.   After two and a half weeks in Spain, we are trying to pick up the nuances of yet another country without benefit of speaking the language.   We have taken a very different approach to Portugal, following back roads between small towns as we traveled across the southern coast. In Spain, w e consulted our camper’s GPS navigator between destinations, and she consistently recommended the quickest route, generally involving a four-lane highway with tolls and quick pull-off rest areas.   The countryside sped by in a blur, orange trees and olives and the people working them visible, but not experienced.   Our two days in Seville were a little different.   We parked in a campervan lot right beside the river, just a...

We came to Cádiz because there is a Mac store where we hoped to buy a new battery for my iPhone, which is failing fast.   It’s rather a strange reason to visit a city, especially the city known for being the longest-inhabited city in Europe, with many architectural and archaeological sights to see.   But the iPhone brought us here. The Mac store is on a side street that the camper couldn’t get down, so Joe dropped me off and I walked down the tiny alleyway, found a man at the store who spoke English, and quickly determined that it would take two weeks to get a battery.   Joe called to let me know that he had pulled into an emergency parking area not far away, so I headed toward him.   On the way, I saw a tourist office and stopped in to ask where we might park the camper to sightsee a bit.   The clerk told me how to find a surface parking area right beside the ocean.   I hopped into the camper and guided Joe there.   It was perfect – an easy walk ...

Here are some photos from our first week on the road: Kristin and Jacob in the camper's front yard. We just bought an outdoor carpet that we'll use when staying somewhere longer, under the canopy that extends out from the van. Two burros, two dogs, a goat and a man in Beás de Granada, Spain. We walked there from our campground. Jacob was silent, watching them go by. Then he went totally crazy a few minutes later over a small yellow feral kitten. Kristin and Jacob in front of the Rock of Gibraltar on a cold, windy day. Joe and Jacob examine the map of Gibraltar.  (Actually only Jacob studied it. Joe just posed for the picture.) The Rock Alhambra - Granada, Spain - a picture of the palace taken from the gardens. Inside Alhambra, there is always the sound of water. Boats out our front window... Jacob models the bed and the back of the camper, including a glimpse of the kitchen (left) and the bathroom door (right). It's a na...

Where can you step out your front door in Spain, walk to Britain, and see Africa? In La Linea de la Conceptión!   We are “free camping” (parking with no electricity or water hookup) in a parking lot just across the international border from Gibraltar, a protectorate of Great Britain. It sits at the end of a little promontory almost at the southern tip of Spain where it shares the Strait of Gibraltar with Morocco.  Gibraltar Last night, after we pulled in, we walked across the border (with Jacob, whose papers we brought, but no one wanted to see) to Gibraltar to explore. As soon as you pass through immigration, the sidewalk and the road cross a wide tarmac that serves as the Gibraltar International Airport runway. Several times a day, foot traffic and cars are stopped with a gate and a red light and have to wait as large jets rumble across the intersection, landing or taking off. Across the line, there are red telephone boxes and double-decker buses, the grocery ca...