Living In Beauty

We noticed him just before the road curved away from the Alaskan river. A young man walking alone with a small canvas rucksack. We never learned his name. We never spoke to him. Yet that brief encounter stayed with us. It took us years to understand why. The post Rode to Joy — The Weight of Less 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.

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.

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 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.

Today we start our 9th year traveling full-time in our 2001 30' Airstream. Grooving on numbers and designing colorful infographics based on analysis is my thing – not so much for Carmen. Every Living in Beauty Anniversary, she steps aside as I release the pretty shiny numbers. Even if you don't like numbers, you can depend on them. I mean it doesn't seem that long ago since we left Fiddler's Cove on a beautiful summer day in 2016 ... .. and here we are, still Out There in 2024, wrapping up 8 years of freedom of movement, living wherever we want whenever we want. A lifestyle widely known as "Living The Dream," which we call Living in Beauty. We're looking forward to a fantastic and adventurous, yet slower and more immersive 9th year. But, today, we're looking back at what we've already experienced in our first 8 years of full-time travel. The post The Magic of Number Nine appeared first on Living In Beauty.

In honor of the upcoming Juneteenth National Independence Day, we are publishing our latest blog post on our Civil Rights Trail journey in the deep South. As we drove north toward Mound Bayou, on our way to the King Biscuit Blues Festival, we expected to visit a Museum, but we soon discovered that the entire town is a museum. If you've ever heard of Mound Bayou, then you are the exception. Former slaves, left to their own resources, built a city that actually thrived all the way into the Civil Rights era... in Mississippi. Mound Bayou is a remarkable story of Brothers – the Davis brothers and the Montgomery brothers, who knew each other almost intimately, whose children played together and studied together, yet shared nothing in common as they worked side-by-side to opposite ends. This is a story for our time. The post Civil Rights Trail – Chapter Four: Mound Bayou, Mississippi appeared first on Living In Beauty.

Merging onto The Blues Trail from the Civil Rights Trail and the Emmett Till Memorial was effortless, and necessary. We've heard that when life gets heavy, The Blues can soothe woes. It was almost Opening Day of the annual Clarksdale Juke Joint Festival, and we needed to blow off some steam. The post Civil Rights Trail – Chapter Three: Juke Joint Festival – Clarksdale, Mississippi appeared first on Living In Beauty.