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.

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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.

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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.

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