The wagon my mule Polly pulled across America. Here, outside Salt Flats, Texas. Note how much hay and water I had to carry to get through that grassless, waterless stretch of desert.

I met Alex Leyva Pena in Hudspeth, Texas, as I was traveling through the area with my mule Polly. He was a truck driver, pulled over to see where I was going, and gave me a bottle of water. He wished me a good trip and told me to look him up if I was ever in Purlear, California, where he was from.

You can leave that rattlesnake you don't need anymore here. Just kidding. It's not that kind of transfer site. It's actually a temporary collection area where trash is collected before it's shipped to the landfill. This one is near the Blackfoot River Canyon Rim outside Blackfoot, Idaho. I saw this sign as I was riding my mules Brick and Cracker from North Carolina to Sun Valley, Idaho.

I drove by this sign in my wagon and pulled over to see if I could buy a jar of cactus jelly. They didn't have any, but they did sell Coca-Cola, which you can buy everywhere, even in Salt Flat, Texas.

He was on supplemental oxygen and mule Polly made his day (Salt Flat, Texas)

I met John Klingberg in Salt Flat, Texas, while traveling across America with my mule Polly. He was hooked to an oxygen machine, smoking a cigarette, and invited me to join him for a ham biscuit. The oxygen hissed, and he said, "I know I shouldn't be eating this way, but these biscuits are just so good." It was just him and me in the little gas station with some turkeys behind it, and he struck me as one of… Continue reading →

I met Bill Sailor as I was riding my mules up the road toward the Fort Hall Indian Reservation. He walked ahead of me and opened the next gate we came to. We parted a few days later and met again in Blackfoot, Idaho, where I was sitting out a patch of snowy weather. He and his wife invited me to breakfast at a local diner, and after that, he bought the mules a sack of feed and a salt… Continue reading →

I was riding my mules, Brick and Cracker, along a giant cornfield in Nebraska. It was early morning. The sun was rising and cast a beautiful shadow onto the wild hemp growing between the road and the corn.

I was pitching my tent in Centennial City, Nebraska while riding my mules Brick and Cracker from North Carolina to Idaho. I turned around, saw this weird creature and thought, "Holy, Crap!" There's a giraffe behind that tree." It wasn't. The body was Cracker, and the head was Brick. No special effects, generative AI, or Chat GPT involved. Real and surreal.