WFRV

Back Home, New Photos

2006-08-26T21:19:00.000-04:00

We made it back home tonight after a full day's drive. Once we got going, it was pretty uneventful. Everyone was glad to be back home.

When we talked about getting the RV unpacked, Denise made it clear that she did not want to start unpacking the RV the moment we got home. She wanted to wait until tomorrow, Sunday, and just enjoy our first night back.

So, of course, as soon as we got back, she wanted to get it unpacked right away! We unpacked quite a bit, went out for Chinese food, and then came home and almost finished unpacking. We have about 5-10% left to go tomorrow, and then need to clean it before we bring it back. I'm glad we did a lot of the unpacking because it will make tomorrow easier.

I uploaded the last of Ben's photos, from the Cincinnat Zoo and from Gettysburg. Ben and I had fun walking around Gettysburg. He was really interested in what life was like for the soldiers and in how the battle turned the tide for the Union army. I had been there a few years ago and saw the place in detail, so I was happy to just show Ben the highlights. We spent about 3 hours looking around, which gives you a good overview. If you really want to get into the details, you can spend 1 - 1 1/2 days there.

Thanks for reading our blog during the trip and for all your comments and feedback. We may have one or two more wrap-up posts before we're done, but having a chance to write about the trip along the way helped motivate us to capture our thoughts and pictures, as well as saved us the trouble of sending a lot of postcards!

Day 27 - Gettysburg, PA to Bedford, MA (Saturday)

2006-08-26T15:50:00.000-04:00

Today is our 17th wedding anniversary and our gift to each other is that we're
going home. Most of us are up at 6:30am getting ready to go (guess who's
still asleep?). There's a pancake breakfast at 7:30 and from there we're
going to drop off the rental car and head out of town. Everything goes well
until Ben and I arrive at the gas station in the rental car around 8:30. We'd
like to have the car back at Enterprise before they open at 9 or they'll
charge us for the day but I can't figure out how to open the gas tank. I
feel like a complete moron but I just can't do it so I call Mike and we
agree to meet at Enterprise where he'll try to do it. You can imagine what
he's thinking at this point. I head off to Enterprise and drive directly
past it and have to call again to ask Mike where it is and by the time I get
there it's 8:53. Mike takes a quick look and can't figure out how to open
the gas tank either so we give up and go inside to sheepishly tell the woman
who's just opened the office that we didn't refuel. She comes out and
points to the gas tank lever which is on the floor next to the driver's seat
(duh!) and charges us for an extra day but not for the gas (Idiot's Rebate,
I guess). Shrugging it off we get into the RV and head for home. I'm
driving first and unbelievably I go the wrong way back into Gettysburg. I
realize it eventually and try to turn around surreptitiously (to the
passengers anyway) but Mike notices. To his credit he does not make fun of
me or criticize but I can tell he's impressed with what a complete fog I
seem to be in this morning.

Fog is the order of the day because for the next three hours I drive through
incredibly thick fog and intermittent rain. This is the first time I've
seen "Fog Area" signs and actual fog at the same time. It isn't until we're
near the Pennsylvania/New York border that the weather clears up. Here the
landscape is much like that of New England and the familiarity is both
comforting and exciting. The roads are terrible, so bumpy that it's
difficult to do anything but listen to an iPod or watch TV (trying to type
is quite an experience). Mike and I switch off around 12:30 after a quick
stop for gas and lunch. Soon after that we're in Connecticut which borders
Massachusetts which is thrilling, and how often can you say that going to
Connecticut is thrilling?? The kids are slowly going crazy; I think they're
beyond excited about this last leg of the trip and they don't have much room
to jump around. They actually tried to play hide-and-seek in the RV. Now
they're bugging me every five minutes so this will have to be my last blog
post of the trip but not the last writing I'm going to do about it. This
has been an incredible journey and I haven't quite absorbed it all yet. To
those of you who've been reading the blog, thanks! I hope some of you are
inspired to travel or at the very least to spend some quality time in a
small space with your family. It'll grow you!

Day 26 - Gettysburg, PA (Friday)

2006-08-26T15:46:00.000-04:00

It's our last day of fun because tomorrow we're driving 460 miles home.
Mike wants to go to Gettysburg, and Ben decides to join him. Given the
choice between learning about the Battle of Gettysburg and then going to see
all the hills and rocks I just learned about, I decide to stay home and
clean the RV instead. Sam opts to join me. We empty out the fridge, clean
the dishes, bathroom, and kitchen, make all the beds, and put everything
away. By lunchtime we're done, and after a sandwich we take a short hike on
a wooded nature trail that meanders around the mountain behind the
campground. A checkerboard table catches our attention on the way back and
we stop to play a game. Toward the end of the afternoon Ben and Mike
return; they enjoyed what they saw of Gettysburg (the visitor center and
four battle sites) and tell us a bit about it. One of the worst battles is
the rush on Pickett's Field where 12,000 men were sent three quarters of a
mile across an open field into cannon fire; 5,000 were dead, wounded, or
missing before they retreated. I don't think it matters what side.

So naturally we go to Colonel Pickett's Buffet Restaurant for dinner. We're
eating some pretty tasty food and discussing the futility and tragedy of war
when Ben yells out "I blame Sam!" because he enjoys blaming everything from
running out of milk to a change in the weather on Sam. And as he yells this
he accidentally smacks his very large glass of milk, the contents of which
fly into my face, my hair, my shirt and my lap, with a significant portion
of it dripping off the table into my right sneaker. After wiping the milk
out of my stinging eye I get up without a word and go into the bathroom
where I wipe off my arm and leg and try to blot my clothes. I don't want to
return to the table until all evidence of the spill is gone. Luckily the
waiter is very attentive and cleans it all up, removing my ruined salad and
replacing Ben's milk immediately. Ben is wisely extremely apologetic and
Mike and Sam courteously try not to laugh, although they tell me the table
next to us got a huge kick out of the incident and when I return to the
table the man next to me says "Isn't that what moms are for?" "Getting
dumped on?" I ask.

A few sips of a "Mike-a-Rita" (a margarita made with Mike's Hard Lemonade)
later I've almost forgotten about the spill except that my right foot is
soggy. After dinner we're all looking forward to playing the lower course
at Mulligan MacDuffer's Adventure Golf. This "Loch Ness" course is easier
than their "Highlander" course we did yesterday but it's still quite
difficult. Luckily for me and the kids it turns out we're playing
Mike-a-Rita Golf because Mike consumed much more of his drink than I did and
is not shooting well at all. Ben starts saying "Dad's drunk" and I am
laughing at each missed putt. It's not a pretty sight and our ridicule does
not sober him up; he comes in third behind Sam who got the maximum par on
most of the holes. When I want to guarantee a Scrabble win against my
mother I give her a glass of wine before we play. The kids and I decide
that from now on we'll give Mike an alcoholic beverage as a handicap before
he plays mini golf.

When we get back to the RV Sam has a very bad headache and goes to sleep
radically early (9:30pm) so Ben, Mike and I watch The Daily Show (Rob
Corddry's last show, and he will be missed) and then get to bed early as
well. We have another Early Start tomorrow followed by a Long Drive but we
don't care because we will be Home in our Own Beds in our Own House by the
end of the day. Tonight is our Last Night in the RV and I am so happy about
that. Ben says this trip has made him appreciate the way we live. Boy
howdy has it.

Day 25 - Rising Sun, IN to Gettysburg, PA (Thursday)

2006-08-25T15:30:00.000-04:00

We get another Early Start. Mike is a big fan and the only motivator of the
Early Start. The rest of us are Giant Grumps who hate to get up early and
moan and whine for a good hour or two. Of course we're happy when we arrive
at the campground before dinner rather than at bedtime, but when you're
repeatedly awakened to a nasty cell phone ring at 6am on your vacation you
can't be expected to smile about it. Can you? This morning is no different
but by 8:15 we've dropped off the rental car and are twenty minutes into our
trip. The rest of Ohio is farmland, mostly flat but getting hillier as we
near West Virginia. It's all corn, corn, corn. Tie it in a pretty bow with
corn syrup in the food supply and obesity. The downsides of civilization:
65mph speed limits, state police every third exit stopping speeders (not me,
of course), lots of vehicles on the road. Upsides: rest areas, lots of gas
stations, the option of healthy food (note I said 'option').

It's hard for us to believe that we only have a few days left until we're
home. Being gone for this long we feel like we've been gone forever and yet
we're also surprised we'll be home so soon. I'll be extremely happy to have
a washing machine and dryer, my own kitchen, and a toilet I don't have to
empty myself (or, to be totally accurate, that Mike has to empty). Our bed
in the RV is so small that Mike's feet hang off the edge which amuses me
when I wake up in the middle of the night from one of the kids rolling over
and making the whole RV sway. And the RV itself is so small that you just
can't make a mess, something the kids and I have been struggling with, and
Mike has been reveling in, since we left. When we get home I will create
piles of junk everywhere and gaze at them lovingly.

The last sixty miles of driving is up and down the curved mountain roads of
western Pennsylvania. Mike is observing the speed limit which is set for
cars not for large RVs and the drawers are flinging open at regular
intervals, not to mention Sam is getting motion sick. Finally to the
passengers' great relief we get stuck behind an eighteen-wheeler doing about
25mph. Finally the road evens out and we get to Gettysburg by 5:30pm, which
is great given the slow speed limits and extra-long stops we took today.
Unfortunately there's a long line at Enterprise and only one extra-chatty
woman working so it takes us a long time to get the rental car, then we get
lost on the way to the RV park, so we're not heading out to dinner until
7pm. Everyone's hungry and cranky but we find the restaurant, the
Farnsworth House Inn, without a problem. The Farnsworth is one of the few
Civil War inns still standing. One of its walls holds 100 bullet holes from
the Battle of Gettysburg, it was named after a general (don't ask me which
side), and it still offers items such as peanut soup and game pie. You can
imagine the kids' delight, although they managed to find something to eat.

Afterwards we try out a mini-golf place we saw when we were lost, Mulligan
McDuffer's Adventure Golf. The landscaping is beautiful and some careful
thought has obviously gone into the plant combinations (Tree Geek!), but it
is by far the hardest course we've ever seen with steep inclines, ditches,
and boulders everywhere. One hole is situated midway down a hill between
two good-sized rocks. Mike and I each take the maximum of six putts
although neither of us succeeds in sinking the ball; the kids each get a
hole in one. We return to the RV around 10:30 and really want to watch The
Daily Show and The Colbert Report so none of us gets to bed until almost
midnight. The Colbert Report is so funny that Ben is gasping with laughter;
this is an improvement over last week when Colbert made a joke about raising
kids and Ben actually spewed water all over the place. Now he's only
allowed liquids during commercial breaks.

Day 24 - Rising Sun, IN (Wednesday)

2006-08-25T11:15:00.000-04:00

We all wake up around the same time and decide it would be fun to go to a
nearby diner for breakfast. (We have pretty much stopped cooking in the RV
except for breakfast for three reasons: we are on the road quite often, we
are extremely tired of eating the same four things all the time, and I am
just tired of cooking. Although I get help I'm still doing most of the
meal-planning and grocery lists. Also I miss my well-equipped
kitchen.) As we leave the RV we're confronted with fog so thick you can't
see more than a tenth of a mile in front of you, not even headlights. It's
quite an experience driving to the diner. The people in the diner, mostly
local farmer types, look at us like we're from Mars but the breakfast is
simple and tasty. By the time we leave the fog has burned off and it's
another beautiful day.

We're spending another day in Cincinnati and first we go to the National
Underground Railroad Freedom Center. This is an amazing museum which just
opened a few years ago and whose content is easily guessed from its name.
It has a great deal of information, movies, a slave house moved intact from
Kentucky, art, and interactive exhibits all dealing with slavery from Africa
to the Emancipation Proclamation. In the 1800's the Ohio River was the
border between Free and Slave States and many of the "conductors" on the
Underground Railroad lived in Ohio near the river so this is the right place
for the Center. It's a wonderful place to visit, very well-done and very
moving, a must-see for anyone, really. One thing I'd never really grasped
before is how much the entire nation profited from slavery, even the Free
States. Cotton was a huge economy and there were many businesses such as
transportation and clothing that profited indirectly. The Center is one of
those places where you walk through just shaking your head, in dismay, in
disbelief, in disgust, and then your eyes water up.

Moving on.... Next we go to the Museum Center which is comprised of three
museums and the one we want to see is the Natural History and Science
museum. We don't have much time (we spent way longer than expected at the
Freedom Center) but it's definitely worth the visit. They have many
displays you can walk through including a dank dark cavern complete with
dripping walls and an ice age glacier with saber-tooth tigers, mastadons,
and a giant sloth (as large as a grizzly!). There are many helpful guides
throughout who will tell you everything you need to know, which would be
great except that we have tickets to an IMAX movie and are practically
jogging through the exhibits. We get to see most of the museum except the
health exhibit (which Sam accidentally went through alone while we searched
for her elsewhere, and we couldn't have paid Ben to see - he's had enough of
the entire topic after 7th Grade Health Class) and still make it to
the IMAX film "Beavers". They are the only mammals besides humans to
manipulate their environment, and manipulate it they do. A single pair can
cut down up to 400 trees a year and flood a huge amount of meadow.
Eventually the dam will break and the lake will revert to land which will be
quite fertile thanks to the time spent underwater. The Circle of Life,
baby. It's been another great day and we head home to get ready for our
long drive to Gettysburg tomorrow.

PS - I just finished reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and highly
recommend it.

Day 23 - Rising Sun, IN (Tuesday)

2006-08-25T11:14:00.000-04:00

We all sleep in until 8:30am, not unusual for Ben but crazy-late for the
rest of us. Since Ben likes to sleep late (and you really don't want to
wake him up before he's ready - he's like a bear in hibernation) we've been
setting up our entire breakfast the night before so that we don't make any
noise in the morning except for the occasional scraping of a spoon in a bowl
of cereal. This morning since we all wake up at the same time we go wild
and make bagels for breakfast. Then of course we have to play mini-golf and
when we're renting the clubs the proprietor tells us the store will be
closed the next day because they can't get anyone to come in. She tells us
to keep our clubs and balls and play all we want tomorrow. Nice! She also
comments that although we have a Yankee accent we don't have a Boston accent
which she illustrates by saying "Pahk the cah in Scahtland Yahd". Sherlock
Holmes goes to Harvard.

After mini-golf we head into Cincinnati. The zoo is supposed to be a gem
but Mike and Sam are done with zoos so they decide to drop off me and Ben
and go to the aquarium in Newport, KY, which is also supposed to be
wonderful. Ben and I spend the day wandering around the Cincinnati Zoo and
Botanical Gardens; the number and variety of animals are great and are set
inside the Gardens so as you're walking from exhibit to exhibit you're
seeing amazing plants. I exclaim over most of them until Ben starts
referring to me as "Tree Geek", then I appreciate them silently. The sweet
potato vine and cranberry viburnum were especially beautiful.

While Ben and I are at the zoo Mike and Sam are at the aquarium petting
sharks. (The Shark Petting Tank is something I'd like to see at the New
England Aquarium.) Turns out the Newport area is akin to Faneuil Hall and
they have a great time eating lunch and book shopping before the aquarium.
I, on the other hand, have trouble finding something not beef or poultry to
eat at the zoo. Komodo Dragon.tastes just like chicken.

The black rhino smells so incredibly putrid that we have to run by the
exhibit. We get to see the cheetah cubs being fed; they are surprisingly
ferocious which explains why the keepers are armed with large prods. Many
of the animals are restrained not by cages but by moats which gives the
impression that you are standing right next to them and also makes for a
better picture. We see the American eagle and hear it cry; it is not the
screech that accompanies the Stephen Colbert eagle but rather a high-pitched
chirpy almost burbly sound. The screech commonly associated with eagles is
actually that of a bird of prey; I forget which one but we learned it in
South Carolina on a nature walk. And of course one would rather have the
national bird issue a virile noise and not some little-girl giggle. It just
feels right.

We all meet up again at closing time and decide to grab dinner in Cincinatti
as we're almost an hour from the RV park and the camp store, as we know, is
closed. We use the AAA guide and pick out a restaurant which is in a
recently gentrified area judging from the old man on the street corner
wearing a sandwich board that says "Poor People Used To Live Here". We
probably shouldn't have picked a place with the word "saloon" in the name
but in we go and are told that the non-smoking section is closed. I've
started to take for granted that restaurants are non-smoking but that's
definitely not the case around here. (This is near tobacco country, isn't
it?) The food is quite good but the people at the bar are smoking a lot and
our waitress is a little too chatty - it's one thing to talk about the
missing boy whose face is plastered on the TV in the bar, but another to
start talking about Susan Smith so that you have to explain THAT to your
kids over dinner. We also learn about her matching upper-arm bruises which
were caused by the shoulder-high moulding in the bar and not by her
boyfriend who's really too small to rough her up. And she says that she
believes in non-smokers' rights just as she believes in non-drinkers'
rights. We really don't want to know what she means and are happy when we
finally pay the bill and go.

Next we're off to Graeter's Ice Cream which is excellent. If you're ever in
Cincinnati go to one; they still make their own ice cream in an
old-fashioned machine and the store is an ice cream/candy shop with
tiled floors and vinyl chairs. All ice cream shops used to have candy as
well; stand-alone ice cream places are a fairly recent invention. (I know
this having just seen a documentary on ice cream. The only New England
place in the show was Four C's on the Cape. I've never been there but I'll
put in a word for Sundae School.)

It's late by the time we get back to the campground but the pool is open
until 10pm and Sam suggests a swim. Mike desperately needs a little quiet
time so the kids and I head over to the pool which is very big and ten feet
at the deep end, heated and overlooking the valley that drops down to the
river. We have the pool to ourselves and enjoy playing monkey-in-the-middle
and jackpot until it gets too dark for me to see the ball (oh am I getting
old); then we are treated to a pretty decent fireworks display across the
river and we also float on our backs and check out the starry sky which is
not spoiled at all by light pollution. All in all a lovely evening.

Day 22 - Santa Claus, IN to Rising Sun, IN (Monday)

2006-08-25T11:07:00.000-04:00

I don't believe in Santa Claus anymore. Indiana, that is. Since we only
have a short drive today our plan is to sleep in, have a leisurely
breakfast, play mini-golf (yes, we're addicted) and leave after lunch. We
stroll over to the camp store around eleven to rent some clubs and guess
what? The whole bleeping campground is closed; we're there "off-season".
It's mid-August! How is this off-season?? Cape-freaking-Cod isn't
off-season until October! Forget it, Santa Claus, we're leaving!

We get as far as the end of the campground driveway when we hear "I'm
hungry" from the back of the RV. So we cross the street to get some lunch,
but in a very huffy way. Then we're on the road again, and now we're in a
hurry because we'd forgotten about the time change and we're hoping to rent
a car tonight at a place that closes at 6pm. We drive through Indiana,
Kentucky and Ohio to get to the second campground in Indiana. Turns out
there aren't many bridges over the Ohio River and our tri-state trip is the
fastest way to get where we're going. I feel like we're back in
civilization; there are people, buildings, and cars everywhere. We make it
to the car rental agency at 5:55, just in time, and Mike drives the rental
while Ben navigates me and the RV to the campground. Naturally we drive
right by it; the directions say to take a right on Bellview and it's
actually a left. Mike finds this distinctly more amusing than we do. One
three-point-turn later (try THAT in a 31-foot vehicle!) we're at the
campground. It's nearly deserted because school here started two weeks ago
but the pool is still open and it's gorgeous. There's also a putt-putt
(mini-golf), basketball hoops, another fishing lake, and a gorgeous view of
the Ohio River. Rising Sun was named because of the incredible sunrise
(which you can bet we won't be seeing) over the mountains. We're back on
Eastern time now and we stay up ridiculously late watching movies. I'm
beginning to wonder how the kids will ever adjust to a school-night bedtime.

T-shirts seen in Santa Claus, IN:

Been to Kansas. Didn't see Dorothy or Toto.

I May Be a Cold Heartless Bitch But At Least I'm Good At It. (After a
glance at this woman I didn't doubt the t-shirt.)

"The Perils of Nude Fly Fishing" above an anatomically correct drawing of a
man waist deep in water about to catch himself in the worst possible place.
This t-shirt was sported by a man treating his little girl to lunch. How
sweet.

The home stretch

2006-08-24T06:27:00.000-04:00

This week has flown by...On Sunday, we were on our way to Santa Claus, IN.
Denise had always heard about the place, and wanted to visit. The
campground sounded great, and there was a water park and amusement park
right next store that the kids were excited about. Unfortunately, Santa
didn't deliver...

We had rearranged our schedule to drop one day in St. Louis and add a day in
Santa Claus, IN. What we didn't know was that school was about to start in
that area and that Sunday, August 20, was going to be the last day that
anything fun would be open. When we arrived mid-afternoon, we found all
this out. We headed over to the water park/amusement park (called Holiday
World), and had a blast. The crowds were thinning out as the park closed at
8. The cashier thought we were crazy to be plunking down $30 a head to walk
in at 3:30. But, we were determined.

We enjoyed the water park the best, particularly a ride called Zinga that we
all rode together. We rode that one a few times, and had a blast. Ben and
Denise wanted to skip the roller coasters, but Sam and I gave them a shot.
I was proud of her as she made it through the one with the steepest drop,
called Voyage. We also rode Legend (twice!). Both are great wooden
coasters (no loops), with high speed drops and very sharp turns. Both
seemed like particularly long rides, which tired us out.

We had hoped to watch the Yankees-Red Sox game that night on cable, but our
RV park didn't have cable hook-ups. They also didn't have Wifi in the
section we were in. This upset Ben, but we at least tracked the game on the
Internet via Verizon Broadband Wireless.

The next day, Monday, all the fun stuff in the RV park was closed. It was
'off season', and that meant no swimming pool, no mini-golf, and nothing to
do. We left there after lunch and headed to Cincinnati one day earlier than
planned. That worked out great.

We spent Monday night in our RV park in Rising Sun, IN, after finding a
place to have dinner. It's a small resort area, near a couple of big
casinos. This was also off season, so the park was pretty empty. On
Tuesday and Wednesday, we explored Cincinnati. Denise and Ben went to the
zoo on Tuesday, but Sam and I went to the Aquarium. Everyone enjoyed their
choice, and we met up afterwards for dinner at a nearby pub (Washington
Platform Saloon -- felt like Cheers on the inside). We then tried Graeter's
Ice Cream, which deserves its great reputation!

On Wednesday, we visited the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
and The Natural History Museum at Museum Center. The Underground Railroad
Museum was fascinating. Cincinnati was right on the border between slave
and free states, with the Ohio River being a major crossing point. The
museum was beautifully done with movies, interactive exhibits, and artwork.
I could have spent hours there, but the kids got bored after a couple of
hours. Ben did buy several historical novels on the subject in the
bookshop, so I know he got something out of it.

Museum Center in Cincinnati is a collection of museums in the old train
station. The building itself is worth the visit as it is beautifully
restored. We spent a couple of hours in the Natural History Museum, which
has several unique exhibits, including a cavern you can walk through and a
depiction of what life at a glacier's edge is like. Although we were tired,
we enjoyed it quite a bit. We also took in the Omni movie on Beavers. As I
learned at MIT, they really are nature's engineers! The kids liked it, but
I am told I took a brief nap in the middle...

Today is Thursday, and we now have more driving than sightseeing left. We
drive to Gettysburg today. Ben and I will look around there tomorrow.
Denise and Sam have already decided to skip it (I could have predicted
this). I've been there before, and am looking forward to seeing this with
Ben. He likes history, and we'll have a good time together. On Saturday,
we do a long drive to get home. Hard to believe that it is almost over...

We haven't taken many pictures over the past few days, but Ben does have
some from the Cincinnati Zoo that we'll upload some time soon.

Day 21 - St. Louis, MO to Santa Claus, IN (Sunday)

2006-08-22T09:49:00.000-04:00

It's a short drive to Santa Claus, only 3 ½ hours. To us now that's
nothing. I drive for the first three hours and Mike drives for the last
half hour. We stop at a Chinese/Japanese buffet that has such Asian
specialties as: buffalo wings, steamed corn on the cob, macaroni salad, and
some kind of cold mixed vegetable salad in a creamy sauce. (Perhaps my
Midwestern friends can explain that to me?)

An aside about flies: boy howdy are there a lot of flies out here. I can
only guess it's because there's so much farmland. Everywhere we've been,
nice or not, has lots of flies. They're everywhere you'd expect (the worst
is when they're buzzing around inside the toilet bowls at rest stops) and
everywhere you wouldn't (the fancy restaurant at the North Rim of the Grand
Canyon) and of course they're in every buffet restaurant we've been to.
Normally I wouldn't eat at a place that had flies and a buffet but it's
apparently inescapable around here. I do not like flies.

We arrive at Lake Rudolph fairly early in the day, around 2:30pm. Just
before we get there I'm checking on the Internet and I see that the Holiday
World/Splashin' Safari theme park is not open on Monday which it turns out
is the first day of school around here! It would have been OH-so-nice if
the campground had mentioned this when I booked the site. Why ELSE do they
think we're coming?? So we hurry over to Splashin' Safari which turns out
to be an excellent water park. We ride a bunch of slides and the lines are
very short; we do one called the Zinga three times. It's a tube ride on a
raft for four that sends you down, around a few curves, then straight down
and out into a funnel on its side; you zoom up one side, come down and zoom
up the other side, and repeat, all the while heading towards the narrow end
of the funnel, where you're dumped into a pool. Thanks to the weight we've
all gained sitting on our butts for so long, we achieve maximum velocity and
go quite high on each side, to the point where you feel like you're standing
before you slide down to the other side. You can see why we go on it three
times.

Around 6:30pm Mike wants to head over to Holiday World for a few coaster
rides; surprisingly Sam wants to go so Ben and I head back to the RV park
(there's a Red Sox/Yankees game he wants to listen to on the computer and I
don't do roller coasters, having some remaining survival instincts). Sam
goes on one wooden roller coaster twice, and Mike says it was a long ride,
about seven minutes. Then he wants to go on a coaster we'd seen from the
highest slide in the water park; it went straight up for a loooong time and
I overheard some women in line for the slide saying "it doesn't look like it
goes straight down from here, but it does". I told Sam before she went off
with Mike, "When Daddy rides the coaster alone, make sure to stay exactly
where he tells you until he gets back." She didn't comprehend which coaster
I was talking about so she went on the straight-down one. (Let me just say
she didn't eat a lot of dinner.) They return by 8:15 and we all settle down
to yet another game of Hearts. We play until someone gets to 100 and then
the person with the lowest score wins. My score is quite low and they try
to gang up on me but I persevere. Suckers!

Day 20 - Oklahoma City, OK to St. Louis, MO (Saturday)

2006-08-22T09:47:00.000-04:00

We’re out of the RV park by 8am and as usual the highways are empty. We’ve not seen any traffic since Illinois. There are always a number of trucks and a few cars on the highways but that’s about it unless you count the roadkill (less deer, more armadillos these days). Yesterday I followed a truck carrying two steers in the back and I stared at one of those animals for a good hour and a half, its white face and sunken eyes looking back at me. Where was it going? Farm? 4-H show? Slaughterhouse?

The drive through Oklahoma is pretty much like Texas, flat, dry, and boring, but by the time we get to Missouri the landscape is greener and hillier. It looks like Massachusetts without the pines. It’s also getting more humid, of course, as we leave the desert. We’re still in East Podunkville no matter where we go, and the place we stop for the night is no exception. We get there at 4pm; another really long day. The RV park is not too crowded and we have a leafy site across from the fishing pond (fishing is a big attraction around here). They have a mini-golf course and we decide to play; it’s about a hundred degrees out and extremely humid. That explains why every child at the park is in the tiny pool (which explains why neither Mike nor I want to go swimming – chlorine can only do so much). The man who gets us our golf clubs tells us that in Missouri school is starting on Monday. He says they start so early because they have to account for snow days. Snow days? Apparently they get a lot of rain and freezing temperatures and when there’s even a threat of ice on the ground they cancel school. Anyway, it accounts for the RV park not being very full. We have the sweltering mini-golf course to ourselves and then we go back to the RV to air-condition ourselves out of our lethargy. We grill some burgers for dinner and then what do we do? Hearts!

Some random thoughts I’d forgotten to add earlier:

In Arizona I see a sign for Winslow. The 70’s song comes to mind and I think how nice it is to see that it hasn’t been exploited. A mile later I see a huge billboard, “See The Corner In Winslow!”

In Texas we pass billboards advertising two things: Jesus and Adult Videos. Who
Would Jesus Do?

Musings

2006-08-20T11:19:00.000-04:00

Today is Sunday. We are in the last week of our trip, and it's hard to
believe that we have been on the road for three weeks. It seems both very
short and like forever. We packed more of the sights we were interested in
to the first half of the trip, and we have had a great time. Since we left
Santa Fe, we fell like we've been sprinting toward the East Coast. We've
had long driving days from Santa Fe to Oklahoma City to St. Louis and,
today, a short drive to Santa Claus, IN.

We adapted very quickly on our trip to living in less than 200 sf of space.
This morning I suggested to Denise that we could save a lot of money by
moving into a 250 sf apartment. I am sure she was rushing right out to
check the online apartment listings because she ran away from me saying 'See
Ya.' Seriously, we have gotten in to a routine. Since we've been pretty
mobile, and generally not spending more than a night or two in any one place
(with a couple of exceptions), we've kept things stowed away in the RV.
This suits my nature well as I do the same thing at home and at work. But,
it surprises me how well Denise and the kids now put things away right after
they use them. I wonder if that will carry over to home. I doubt it. I am
sure that everyone is looking forward to leaving things around our house
once we get home.

Denise needs caffeine! Denise generally doesn't drink anything with
caffeine. But, when she drives, she drinks tea or Diet Coke. She says she
needs the caffeine to stay awake while she drives! I know that the scenery
got a little boring in the West, but that's a little scary. She's going to
drive in the morning now so that her caffeine influx from her morning tea is
fresh in her nervous system.

I learned that our kids can actually get along. Since Ben, our 13 year-old
son, generally doesn't like to play with Sam, his 10 year-old sister, we had
some tense times early on in the trip when Denise and I really needed them
to play together and not bother us. However, one benefit of this trip has
been that they learned to get along. OK, not all the time. They need to
get one or two fights out of their system every day, but they also learned
to play together, watch the same movies, and sometimes even wrestle
playfully on the bed in the back bedroom!

Somehow I thought I would have more free time while Denise was driving. I
haven't read nearly as many books as I thought I would, nor watched as many
movies. I have spent time keeping up with my email and reading the news
(online, via downloading the Boston Globe digital edition). But, the hours
on the road fly by. I don't have that recollection from when my family did
a similar trip when I was 11. We are much more entertained in the RV than
in the back of the station wagon.

The kids are really looking forward to the RV park in Santa Claus, IN. They
are (supposedly) the #1 RV park in the nation. When we travel, I am always
amazed at how much the kids like staying in our hotel room vs. getting out
and seeing the sights. We shifted our travel plans slightly to have one
extra day in Santa Claus, IN so that we could all relax a bit, play extra
mini golf at the RV park, and take in the water park next to the RV park. I
hope the weather holds up tomorrow (Monday) so we can have fun at the water
park.

For you techno-geeks out there, I have to say that the Verizon Broadband
Wireless service is pretty darn good. Most of the RV parks offer Wifi, but
I have had trouble at several of them (weak Wifi signal, no signal at all,
problems getting onto the Internet with no one able to help, or very limited
Internet bandwidth). The Verizon service comes in at about 140 kbps when
you are driving just about anywhere, although there are a few dead spots.
When stopped in one place in a big city, you can get upt to 500 kbps. Now,
this isn't like our cable modem at home, but it gets the job done. We've
been able to download music and videos into iTunes for our iPods (or to
watch The Daily Show and Colbert Report), keep up with our email, upload our
photos, post our blog entries, etc., with only a modicum of patience
required. It reminds me of those old dial-up days. It's interesting to see
the kids react. Their expectations are much higher. They think it is
really slow and kind of stinks, rather than marveling that it works at all,
as I do.

Well, onto a game of PC Monopoly with the kids while Denise drives for a
while. We've still got some fun ahead of us in Santa Claus, IN, outside
Cincinnati, and in Gettysburg. And, we should be able to watch the
Yankees-Red Sox on ESPN tonight at the RV park. Ben and I have enjoyed
seeing the Yankees score lots of runs in the first three games of the series
(sorry, Mike T). We'll see if it keeps up.

Day 19 - Santa Fe, NM to Oklahoma City, OK (Friday)

2006-08-19T23:24:00.000-04:00

Imagine sitting down in a fairly comfortable upholstered chair with your
legs out in front of you. You're in front of an enormous flat screen TV.
There's a DVD playing of land, flat land, acres and acres of it, with some
small deciduous trees and an occasional sprinkling of cattle. The
spaciousness is marred only by the billboards which crop up here and there.
Now imagine watching that DVD for five hours straight. That's my drive
through the Texas panhandle and Oklahoma. It's mind-numbingly boring. We
pass the "largest cross in the western hemisphere" and a wind farm which to
me is far more interesting. Why is there only one wind farm around here?
There's NOTHING ELSE around, and it certainly wouldn't ruin the scenery any
more than the billboards. And what about solar energy? Why isn't the vast
flat uninhabited windy sunny interior of the country plastered with
alternative energy sources? We drive through one town with the same
population as my hometown high school. Not bad, I think, two thousand
people is enough to seem crowded. Five minutes later I'm still driving
through the town and I realize it's so spread out they must never see each
other. I could never live like this (and I'm sure they wouldn't want me
anyway).

I'd resolved not to stop in Texas (can you guess why?) but the timing doesn't
work, we're low on gas. There are Subway restaurants all along the highways
out here and that's where we get lunch; everyone's getting tired of the
sandwiches we've been making every day. We're into Oklahoma shortly after
lunch; there is no paving going on here as it was in Texas and you can tell
because the road gets very bumpy. Otherwise the scenery is exactly the same
only with less trees, as if it's possible to make the driving more boring.
We pass a city with a sign that says "Home of Miss America 1981". That's
the best they can do? Miss America's hometown 25 years ago? Nothing since
then? We think about our wonderful friend who grew up on a farm in
Oklahoma; we don't know how she did it.

We arrive in Oklahoma City around 5:45pm and can't find a grocery store near
the RV park so we keep driving looking for a restaurant. We end up at an
Outback Steakhouse; America is indeed homogeneous. It's 103 in the shade
(get out of the shade!) and the RV is 95 by the time we get back into it.
It takes a few hours to cool down once we're at the campground but we sleep
comfortably. This is a one-night stop and we're driving another full day
tomorrow. We're trying to get to Santa Claus, IN by Sunday night where we're
staying at Lake Rudolph, the #1 National RV Park right next door to Splashin'
Safari, the #2 World Water Park. I've booked this place because it's in
Santa Claus, IN which had such a goofy name I had to check it out. Turns
out the kids are pretty psyched to get there and are very cooperative on
these long drives. We've been doing more driving than sight-seeing these
days and are looking forward to a fun stop. Tomorrow night St. Louis,
Sunday night #1.

Day 18 - Santa Fe, NM (Thursday)

2006-08-19T23:23:00.000-04:00

Into every vacation a little tedium must fall. We were told by the rental
agent to get an oil change halfway through our trip and we're also in
desperate need of clean clothes. Mike heads out with the RV for the oil
change after dropping us off at the campground laundromat with three
gigantic loads of laundry. We look like the little dog Max staggering under
the Grinch's burgled bags. At 9:15am the laundromat isn't too crowded and
we find enough empty washers to get started. It's a sunny day, not too hot,
and we sit outside at a picnic table playing Hearts waiting for the washers
to finish. Three hours later the laundry is done, folded and put away in
the freshly-oil-changed RV and we're off to downtown Santa Fe.

I'm driving while Mike navigates us to an RV-friendly parking lot. We're on
narrow city streets and the parking lot is almost full; we end up blocking
traffic for a good five minutes before we can get in. By the time we park
in the last RV spot (not an easy proposition) the lot is closed. It turns
out that the annual Indian Market is this weekend and everyone's coming in
for the preview sales. The attendant tells us that the market is
world-famous and that Indians from as far away as India come to sell their
wares. It's the biggest event of the year in Santa Fe, and interestingly
when Mike and I were here fifteen years ago it was during the Indian Market
as well. We plan to check out the market after lunch at another restaurant
recommended to us by the campground; one of the employees is quite a foodie
and his suggestion is again an excellent one.

As we leave the restaurant clouds are forming overhead and we can hear
thunder in the distance. Santa Fe has had the most rain in thirty years
this year and some of the new construction on the outskirts of town has been
washing away due to floods. We start ducking into shops to avoid the rain
and there are plenty of shops to see. Santa Fe is the oldest city in the
U.S. and has a heavy Spanish and Native American influence so it's an
interesting place to walk around. The city itself is bordered by small
mountains on one side and a great plain on the other; the buildings are made
of adobe and there are a lot of flowers and plants. Mike and I loved Santa
Fe the first time we visited and he still dreams of retiring here someday
(it'll have to be with his second wife). We also visit the La Fonda hotel
and the Plaza, still walking around and shopping. This goes on until Ben
says, "Another shop?! I'm at my breaking point!" and we decide it would be
best to leave. No one's hungry after our big lunch so we settle in for
another round of Hearts (the kids have become addicted to the game) and an
early night. Tomorrow is another long day in the RV.

Day 17 - Grand Canyon, AZ to Santa Fe, NM (Wednesday)

2006-08-19T23:22:00.000-04:00

It's going to be at least an eleven-hour drive today, 560 miles plus a
one-hour time change (Arizona doesn't observe daylight savings time). We
leave at 6:45am and make it to Santa Fe by 4:45pm including stops. The
speed limit here as on most of the highways we've traveled in the Midwest is
75, which is good for two reasons: we cover a lot of distance in a short
amount of time, and the monotonous landscape flies by. It's certainly
scenic if you're looking at a postcard, but driving for hours on end looking
at the same postcard gets pretty boring. The highway is straight, the land
is flat, there are no buildings. I've taken to drinking a diet Coke in the
afternoon just to stay awake.

The Rancheros de Santa Fe campground recommends a restaurant and we head
right out for dinner. Driving around Santa Fe is a little tricky as the
streets are somewhat narrow but the destination is worth the trip. The
restaurant, Castros, is fantastic, and the kids taste sopapillas, posole,
and jicama for the first time. After we return to the campground we settle
in for a mean game of Hearts; we've taught Sam how to play and she not only
gets it right away, she's pretty good. She loves dumping the Queen of
Spades on unsuspecting players and will save it for just that purpose.

Day 16 - Grand Canyon, AZ (Tuesday)

2006-08-19T23:21:00.000-04:00

We all sleep late this morning; it must be the fresh mountain air. We head
to the Lodge for breakfast and the 35-minute walk gives us all an appetite.
From breakfast we take a short walk along an overlook trail where I meet a
woman who actually has a worse fear of heights than me. She's clinging to
the rocks on the far side of the trail and won't even edge out to see her
family who've decided to climb up a ledge on the inside edge of the trail.
My family's up there too but I'll at least step out to look up at them.
Briefly. The trail progresses and gets worse; at one point the trail is
about five feet wide with sheer drops on either side and an eight-inch wall
to keep you from falling. It's right about here that I think to myself "I've
had enough of this." But onward we go and eventually get to the overlook.
Another cliff jutting out over nothing, another guard rail that you could
easily fall over, another stunning view of the canyon, and another bout of
dizziness and nausea for me. Wahoo!

Finally everyone's satisfied with the view and we head back; Mike takes the
longer trail back to the campground with his camera, and the kids and I head
for the gift shop and the shorter trail. He makes it back to the RV 55
minutes before we do. It's hot and sunny but there are thunderclouds
overhead and the occasional rumble of thunder. We rest for a while in the
RV before going on our last hike of the day.

Our last hike is to the Coconino Overlook; it's only .6 miles but pretty
much straight down; it was originally an escape route from a severe winter
storm on the North Rim. Now it's a well-tended slightly rocky trail that
crisscrosses the canyon wall and it's the only access to the canyon from the
North Rim. But we're not taking the day-long hike all the way down which
has all sorts of warning about the death and destruction that may befall the
unwary hiker. As we head out of the campground it starts to thunder and as
we start on the trail that connects to where we're going it starts to rain.
It's only water, we say, and continue on. By the time we get to our trail
it's raining somewhat harder but we're wet anyway, so we forge ahead. To
our dismay we realize that "mules share the trail with hikers" means "you
will be dodging mule poop the whole way". The stench is quite bad and we're
glad it's at least cool from the rain but thankfully not yet wet enough to
make the trail Manure River. As we head down we have to step off to the
side, such as it is, three times for mule trains to pass us on the way up.
The first group is comprised of three grizzled men in chaps and cowboy hats;
their mules are loaded with giant boxes and they look like they're out of a
book from the 1800's. The next two groups are people who are coming back
from mule rides that the North Rim offers, and the leader of the last of
these groups tells us "it's going to be pouring in about five minutes".
Undaunted, we carry on, although we notice that all the people we see are
heading up rather than down. Also we know that every step we take down is
one we'll have to take up, in the rain, dodging tennis balls of mule manure.
We continue down for about twenty minutes and the rain gets harder; thunder
rumbles overhead and we start to see cracks of lightning. Taking refuge
under a tree we discuss the situation. Mike wants to turn around; the kids
want to continue. I'd like to continue but those bolts of lightning are
disconcertingly close, and we're on the side of a cliff where all the trees
are tall pines. We see a young couple coming up and ask them how far to the
bottom; they manage to convey "fifteen minutes" in Italian, and after they
slowly shuffle past us Mike points out that Sam is not exactly an alpine
climber, and so we decide to the kids' great disappointment to head back up.
Mike thinks it'll take us an hour; I say half an hour. The bet is on and I'm
steaming up the hill, not even wanting to stop when the kids ask for water.
Of course Mike will stop for anything, but even still we reach the top in
twenty minutes. "You were way off," he says.

Now we're tired, wet, and cold, and the walk back to the campground is a
long one. We're disappointed that we didn't make it to the overlook but
very happy to be heading somewhere out of the rain. After we change our
clothes we pop them in the campground dryers and take quick hot showers for
$1.50 - the best showers we've had on the trip. A quick dinner and fairly
early to bed; we have a long drive ahead of us.

Day 15 - Virgin, UT to Grand Canyon, AZ (Monday)

2006-08-17T22:29:00.000-04:00

The ride to the Grand Canyon isn't too bad. Certainly it's winding and
uphill but we thought it'd be worse. We get to the Canyon by noon owing to
the fact that Arizona doesn't have daylight savings time. The park ranger
tell us that the Lodge is only a mile walk along a trail and lunch at the
restaurant sounds pretty good. Plus, there's a trail that leaves from the
Lodge which we could walk after lunch. Hunger has us starting off at a
pretty good clip but after half an hour we start to wonder if we've taken
the wrong path. How long can it take to walk a mile? After forty-five
minutes we finally get there; turns out the path is more like 1.5 miles and
it's up and down, winding, and very rocky, not easy at all. During lunch we
decide to walk back to the RV and drive it 23 miles to the Cape Royal
outlook over the Grand Canyon; the North Rim overlooks part of it but not
the main section and from Cape Royal you can see the Colorado River. But
first Ben and I want to hear a talk on the condor; the Grand Canyon is one
of a few places in the US where the condors are being reintroduced into the
wild. Mike and Sam take the road back to the campground and get there in
half the time, as do Ben and I about forty-five minutes later.

I drive to Cape Royal so that Mike can navigate, a task that isn't too
difficult but I'd prefer to drive anyway. At one of the turns there's a
large yellow sign that says "Travel by Vehicles Over 30 Feet Not
Recommended". Our RV is 31 feet long. I'm ready to turn around and Mike
calls me a wimp. We're reminded of the recent Car Talk we listened to where
they discuss how men think rules are for wimps. So we proceed. First we
see signs for Winding Road, then bold squiggly lines with 25 mph. speed
limits, then U-Shaped Curve at 15 mph. Sometimes on one side of the road we're
just feet from the edge of a cliff. What fun! I'm not enjoying the drive
at all, but it's not because I'd rather be sitting and enjoying the view. I'd
rather be at sea level.

At Cape Royal there's a nice walk through scrub forest to an overlook point.
There are signs along the way telling us about the flora and fauna and I
enjoy that but when we get to the overlook I can't proceed. Luckily there's
a bench to sit far back from the edge and enjoy the view. I have an
acknowledged fear of heights and all I can think is how much I'd like to be
away from here. That's pretty much the way the afternoon goes from there;
stopping at scenic viewpoints, wishing I were somewhere else, watching my
husband and children stand inches from the edges of cliffs. I wish I could
tie a rope to them. Or tie them up, throw them in the RV, and speed off to
Santa Fe.

We do learn that we can see over 80 miles from up here, and that the Navajo
Reservation is across the canyon, and that one of the early canyon explorers
had traveled in the Far East a lot and so gave many of the places Eastern
names. We also learn how many of the native plants the Native Americans
used for everything from construction to medicine. There's also evidence of
a controlled fire that was allowed to burn for a while up here and it's
interesting to see what's grown back and what hasn't after five years.

We have a "real weenie roast" that night, a term that cracks up the kids.
What meal is better than hot dogs impaled on a skewer and stuck into the
flame of a campfire, topped off with smores? It's quite cool up here at
night and we bundle up in sweatshirts and try to play a game of gin, but it
gets too dark so we give up and just enjoy the fire burning down. Once the
fire burns out our RV has a house battery so even though this campground has
no water or electricity we're able to play a few rounds of gin rummy before
going to bed. We make one more trip outside to see the stars; there's no
light pollution up here and the view is amazing.

Day 14 - Zion National Park, UT (Sunday)

2006-08-17T22:28:00.000-04:00

We make it to Zion by 9:50am which is a world record for us. Another
beautiful hot day and we start out with a 2-mile hike along the river. We
see a lot of lizards and gigantic flying black beetles, one of which tries
to attack me causing me to scream, flail my arms and run around like a
lunatic in true girly fashion. This has Ben laughing for a good thirty
minutes. The trail ends at Zion Lodge where we grab some lunch in the
fanciest restaurant we've been to so far. We spend the lunch cracking each
other up with all the ridiculous comments we've heard each other make on the
trip (sample: "if it's good enough for the toilet it's good enough for
me"). After lunch we grab the Zion shuttle which is the only way to get
from point to point in the park. When Zion opened they got seventy visitors
a day; now they're up to seventy thousand, and the shuttle is their attempt
to squeeze five thousand cars into five hundred parking spots.

Departing the shuttle at the end we follow a trail that heads north into the
canyon. It's paved for a while and then it turns into The Narrows, where
the canyon walls are twenty feet apart and the Virgin River fills the canyon
floor. Many people forge ahead past where the trail ends and so do we. We're
in swift-flowing water up to our knees, sometimes our thighs, and we keep
our shoes on because the floor of the river is rock-filled and hard to
navigate. It's fun, although Sam falls in a few times (we wonder if it's on
purpose) and her cute white clothes become completely see-through. Better
her than me! At one point we watch the people in front of us go in up to
their chests and Mike decides to turn back. The kids and I move ahead,
sticking close behind a woman in bare feet who manages to find the best
route possible for another fifteen minutes up the river. At that point I
see dark storm clouds overhead and hear the rumble of thunder, and having
read several signs about what to do in case of flash flood ("wedge yourself
into a high crack above the water level"), I decide we should head back.
When we return to the paved trail we venture into the river one last time,
balancing on rocks to wash the silt and rocks out of our sneakers and socks.
It's so incredibly dry up here in this mountainous desert that by the time
we get off the shuttle at our car our shoes aren't squishy wet anymore.
They're still damp but we set them in the sun at the RV park and within a
few hours they're bone dry. Hmm, it IS a dry heat. We have another
home-cooked meal and try to pack up a bit because we're heading out early
the next day to the Grand Canyon. It's not too far, only 130 miles or so,
but it's certainly not highway driving.

Seen on a t-shirt: "Rock is dead. Long live paper and scissors."

Day 13 - Bryce Canyon, UT (Saturday)

2006-08-17T22:27:00.000-04:00

We have two days left in the Zion area and we decide to drive to Bryce the
first day. It's a long drive and we'd rather not do two long drives in a
row. The map claims that Bryce is 86 miles away; farther than we'd like but
how long can it take? We head out and realize after about 15 minutes that
we've forgotten the National Parks Pass; that sets us back about half an
hour. By the time we're really on our way it's 11am, but that's still
early, right? The route we're taking is a "scenic byway" (translation:
curving mountainous road with many sharp turns and low speed limits) that
cuts through Zion National Park, and we have to wait a while at the
entrance. Once we're in we see sky-high red cliffs and deep canyons; we
stop several times to take pictures. It turns out this is the Zion-Mt.
Carmel byway, a recommended must-see if you're visiting. Unfortunately the
road is slow going, and there's a wait at the 1-mile-long tunnel along the
route. The tunnel was made decades ago and can only accommodate RVs if they
straddle the two lanes, so whenever an RV has to go through traffic is
stopped one way. We're in a rental but there are many RVs on the road.

Finally we get through Zion National Park and onto a state highway, but we've
already been driving for an hour and we've barely gone a third of the way.
The natives are getting restless and hungry and apparently the granola bars
we brought are hated by all. After about a half hour we drive through a
town with lots of restaurants each of which has a Closed sign on it. We
wonder if it's Sunday but no, perhaps this town just doesn't get the traffic
to warrant opening. Odd. Another half hour goes by and finally we see a
place that's open so we pull in. It's clean and the food is basic; the
service is a little slow but it gets the job done. Hunger satisfied, we're
off to Bryce. In the end it's taken us 3 hours to get there and we say we
wouldn't have gone if we'd known how long it would take, but oh, are we glad
we came.

Bryce National Park is comprised of a canyon that has been eroded by a cycle
of freezing and thawing over time. This has resulted in hoodoos, great
spires of rock jutting out of the canyon floor and the trails there lead in
and around these spires. We choose a relatively short trail, not even a
mile but down 310 feet. The trail involves a lot of switchbacks and at some
points it's a pretty sheer drop off the side; not great for someone with a
fear of heights like me. I can tell who shares my fear; they're the ones
taking tiny steps and attempting to become one with the sides of the cliffs.
It's a very hot day ( but once again a dry heat) and the wind here is very
strong; the climate takes every bit of moisture out of you. We are very
thirsty by the time we get to the bottom but we didn't think to bring water;
after all, it was only a mile and a half round trip. Once we get to the end
of the trail we realize that Sam's not going to make it to the next trail so
Mike and Ben carry on and Denise and Sam return the way they came.

On the way back Sam is very thirsty and desperately wants water. She's also
tired and hot and her legs hurt. "I can feel the muscles in my legs!" she
complains at one point. "Yes," I say, "that's called exercise." Later she
says, almost crying, "I need water or I'm going to faint!" Then, "Just
leave me here to die." This is said as she's half bent over, taking one
Frankenstein step at a time up the steep incline. I grab her hand and
literally pull her up the path, then stop and say, "We're going to the top,
damn it! You're made of peasant stock! You're made of sterner stuff than
this! We're not quitters!" The bit about 'peasant stock' earns me a
strange look but she straightens up and starts moving. It's amazing the
ridiculous things that come out of your mouth once you're a parent.

Once we get to the top we get four 32-oz. bottles of ice cold water for
$4.25, which I assume is the price of one because why not gouge when you
can, but no, it's for all four. We hop in the car and drive a short
distance to the place where Mike and Ben will be emerging; it's taken us so
long to get back that they've beaten us and are already walking down the
road when we arrive. They're relieved to see the water as they've just
ascended a half mile straight up and we continue on to a few more viewpoints
before we leave. This is the Indian legend about Bryce: there were a
people who lived in the canyon, the Legend People. They were bad and Coyote
decided to change them into rocks. They were changed instantly, some
standing, some sitting, some in groups, some alone, and all in face paint,
which is why the rocks are orange and red and white. The rocks are called
hoodoos from voodoo, meaning a bad thing. Once you're at the very top and
looking down you can see why that legend originated; it does look like a
canyon crowd of sturdy rock people.

We decide to take a different route home and stop in Panguitch for dinner at
the Cowboy Smokehouse. A miracle occurs and the kids sit down without
complaint, read a menu that is largely foreign to them, order food they've
never tried before, and eat it without comment. The food is delicious
(according to the meat eaters) and we buy a bottle of their barbecue sauce.
Their walls are papered with business cards and Mike leaves one which they
put right up. There are cards from everywhere; we see one from a London
taxi service. From the restaurant it's two hours back through the Dixie
National Forest. At one point we're in a birch forest, elevation 8,896
feet. It's beautiful and we're glad the sun doesn't set until we're back on
the highway. The different route saves us an hour but we're all tired when
we get back. Tomorrow it's on to Zion which is thankfully only twenty
minutes from the park.

Quick update

2006-08-17T21:59:00.000-04:00

We've been busy, and Internet access has been poor and spotty. So, we haven't had much chance to write. Expect some long posts from Denise soon.

In brief:
On Monday morning, we drove for just a couple of hours from southern Utah to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We hiked around there Monday afternoon and Tuesday. It was awesome! We also enjoyed the lodge there and some nice meals. The North Rim is the way to see the Grand Canyon. It's very rustic and you can enjoy the natural beauty. We saw several deer on our hikes, and also got caught in the rain on one hike (which wasn't fun). But, we had a great time.

On Wednesday, we drove all day to Santa Fe, NM. We got an early start, which gave us time to go out to dinner at a nice place in Santa Fe called Castro.

Today (Thursday), we did some errands in the morning (oil change on the RV, laundry), and then walked around Santa Fe this afternoon. We didn't get any pictures, but we did enjoy the shops. Denise and I had been there before, but the kids got a little restless with the shopping. So, we cut it a bit short and headed home to relax in the RV watching movies after dinner.

Friday is a driving day, with a full day drive to Oklahoma City. That's just a stop over. We go on Saturday to St. Louis. We are considering cutting our stop in St. Louis short and spending more time in Santa Claus, IN (believe it or not). There is a great water park there, and the kids are clamoring to spend a full day there.

Grand Canyon Photos

2006-08-17T21:57:00.000-04:00

We're behind on writing, but I posted our photos from the Grand Canyon here.

Bryce and Zion

2006-08-14T09:54:00.000-04:00

We spent Saturday and Sunday in Southern Utah, exploring Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park. Both are gorgeous. I went there as a kid, but didn't remember any of the details of how beautiful they are.

At Bryce, we walked along the top, and then explored a path down to the floor of the canyon. Denise and Sam went partway down, but Ben and I went down to the floor and back up again. It was a tiring hike, but we both felt great at completing what sounded pretty difficult. At Zion, visitors mostly travel along the floor of the canyon, looking up at the walls. We didn't attempt any of the climbs up the side as were were tired from climbing Bryce the day before. However, at Zion we did walk along the Virgin River past the end of the path, literally wallking in the river, which is shallow. I met some people who had hiked 5 hours to the end of the canyon, camped out over night, and hiked back on Sunday. We weren't up for that, but Denise and the kids walked about 10 minutes further than I did before turning back.

Photos are here:
Bryce
Zion

After exploring Bryce on Saturday, we ate at a great local barbeque place, Cowboy's Smokehouse in Panguitch, UT. The food was fantastic, but you'd never venture in if you just saw the outside. If you ever go there, you'll see my business card on the back of the side wall, along with thousands of others.

Today is Monday, and we are off to the Grand Canyon after dropping off the rental car 45 minutes away in St. George, UT.

It's not the old Skamper

2006-08-12T10:02:00.000-04:00

Denise made a comment about comparing our RV, or the big bus RVs, with the old Skamper camper that my family traveled in. The attached picture wasn't the camper we had, but it is similar.

We have enjoyed the relative luxury of our RV, and you get used to living in tighter quarters than usual. It would be a much bigger adjustment to really squeeze into a small pop-up camper like my family's old Skamper. I think that we are all used to having more in our life, and scaling down to a pop-up camper is a big adjustment. I only have the fun memories, and have blocked out the bad ones (after only 30+ years!). It is real hard to imagine our family traveling in one of these, but I guess we're spoiled.

Catching up...

2006-08-12T09:31:00.000-04:00

When it comes to writing, Denise steals the show. But, it's been a while since I have written, and it's time to catch up.

I really enjoyed Denver. It was a great city. Things are so spread out, and the city turns to countryside very quickly. You really lose an appreciation of how big our country is when you live on the East Coast.

Denise is right about the fact that I am getting bored with zoos. The Denver Zoo was beautiful, and it was a gorgeous day to be outside. But, how many times can you look at the same animals? I took a lot of pictures which kept me busy. I wish we had time to go to the science museum and the IMAX film there on Greece. But, we spent so much time at the zoo that the day got away from us.

We also went to Heritage Square in Golden, CO on Wednesday. It was very quaint. They had a few rides and a few shops, with an 1880s Victorian theme. We rode the Alpine slide, which was a first for everyone but me. This is a ride with a track that is laid out on a ski slope, and you control a small car with and accelerator/brake lever. I went full speed all the way down. Anonymous went mostly full speed, but was hesitant about flipping over. Denise and PieLover took it slowly. We ate lunch in a 50s type diner (how is that Victorian?), and played a round of mini-golf. If the PieLover wins, she'll play. So, we have instituted a huge handicap for her. With that, she plays almost as well as the rest of us anyway...Otherwise, she gives up as soon as she misses a couple of shots.

I had always wanted to go to Red Rocks Ampitheater. Too bad we couldn't see a concert there. The venue is spectacular. It's not large, but the views of the mountains and city skyline in the distance are breathtaking. The pictures don't do it justice. Inspired, I listened to U2's "Under a Blood Red Sky" CD while driving to Utah (recorded at Red Rocks).

The long drives, like the one from Denver to Southern Utah, don't bother me at all. I cue up a bunch of NPR podcasts and they help pass the time. I also listen to a lot of music. I enjoy the desolate scenery of the area and was struck by how empty the place is. Yet, people still live here. It's a different life than ours on the crowded East Coast.

When I picked up the rental car yesterday (Friday) in St. George, UT (a 45 minute drive from our RV park, but the nearest place), the Enterprise driver told me that the place has 'really grown' over the past 5 years and there are now 200,000 people in the greater St. George area. St. George itself was a large town crowded around a few main streets. But, there were several malls and shopping seems to be the main attraction. Those people on the outskirts, like in Virgin, UT, have to buy things somewhere, I guess.

Denise and the kids wanted to take a day off from sightseeing yesterday. I like to go-go-go and see as much as possible. They all seem to like to hang out in the RV park and relax. I get kind of bored doing that, so I took on the task of running a lot of errands while I was returning with the rental car. It worked out fine for everyone, and we did play some Frisbee, watch a movie (The Sting, which I hadn't seen since the 1970s, although it is one of my favorites), and cook a nice dinner.

Today, Saturday, we're off to Bryce Canyon, with Zion National Park tomorrow. On Monday, we head out to the Grand Canyon. We're staying in a National Park on Monday and Tuesday nights, so don't expect to hear from us then. We won't have the usual Wifi facilities that we have grown accustomeed to on this trip...

Day 12 - Virgin, UT (Friday)

2006-08-12T09:26:00.000-04:00

It takes until 2pm for Mike to get our rental car; it turns out the nearest place is 45 minutes away; Enterprise comes to pick up Mike who picks up some necessary items on his return trip and reports back that Hunan Palace is not bad. The cell phone reception here is lousy and the phones only work on analog. The kids and I spend the morning bumming around; we watch bad movies, play lots of gin rummy, throw a Frisbee around, make lunch. It's very relaxing. Saturday and Sunday we're going to Bryce and Zion National Parks and today is a great day to do nothing. When Mike gets back we play a lot of ping pong, watch a movie, make another dinner out of the cookbook, and then Mike and the kids play several games of Life while I type this blog entry. Now it's 9:23pm and Sam is blocking my view of the screen with her hands. Ciao.

Day 11 - Virgin, UT (Thursday)

2006-08-12T09:23:00.000-04:00

We're on the road by 7:15am, having showered and packed up the night before. As we leave the Colorado area we see mostly the same scenery, high mountains dotted with evergreens. Near Vail the elevated highway follows the winding Colorado River through the high cliffs of the Rocky Mountains. We talk about the pioneers and how difficult crossing the Rockies must have been. Sam tells us that the pioneers would lose wagons to "stumping"; when they sent their wagons down the steep mountains the wagons would sometimes hit a stump and split apart. They learned quickly to send the wagons down empty.

Eventually we move into Utah and this is the most desolate area we've seen yet. And that's saying something. The earth is barren; only a few small shrubs inhabit the ground, there is no grass, and there are rarely exits off the highway. A lone small fence and a solitary row of telephone wires on poles are our only company alongside the highway. Once or twice we see a collapsed barn or the hulk of an abandoned car off in the distance. A crow is sometimes perched on an infrequent exit sign which reads "Ranch Exit" like all the rest. I drive for five hours straight and that is all I see. Gradually the road starts climbing up and down and then the grade gets so steep for so long that the cruise control cuts out; the truck can't get over 45 miles per hour. I've never seen an engine give out like that before. There are semis that drive in the slow lane with their lights flashing; I don't think they're going over 30 mph. I time one of the grades; I'm going uphill steadily for 5 solid minutes at 45 mph. (I'm not going to do the math but I'm sure my geeky friends will do it. You know who you are.) At one point I see a sign that says "Exiting Fishland National Park"; several miles later another signs informs me that I am "Entering Fishland National Park". Go figure.

As we cross the desert the land is completely flat and stretches to distant cliffs. There is one giant cloud that squats over a cliff ahead of us; after a few hours we begin to near the cliff, and as we ascend we begin to see raindrops on the windshield. We've been looking at this rain cloud for hours; around here you can see the weather so far away. At home that cloud would have been a day of rain and we'd never know that fifty miles away the sun is shining.

Finally finally finally we near Zion National Park. We begin to see signs of life; small farms, cattle, houses, businesses. We'd hoped to stop for dinner but don't see anything besides a highway sign that reads "Hunan Palace 9 m." in the wrong direction. We've driven for eleven hours and only stopped for gas twice and when I step out of the RV I feel like I'm still moving; it's the same feeling you get when you step off a boat after sailing for a long time. Happily this RV park is fully loaded; it has a restaurant, grocery store, pool room, table tennis, swimming pool, spa, and even offers massage. We are set up in five minutes and head to the restaurant for dinner; Mike and I are too fried to cook. The "restaurant" turns out to be one long-haired bushy-bearded man at a take-out window who wildly underestimates how long it will take him to make us dinner but he eventually finishes and it's good.

Day 10 - Golden, CO (Wednesday)

2006-08-12T09:21:00.000-04:00

Another bright and hot day and we decide to see Red Rocks Park and Amphitheater. But first we check out a place called Heritage Place about a mile up the road; it's billed as an 1800's town with amusements. It's cheesy but fun. We start out on the alpine slide, a half-mile concrete trough that starts 490 feet up and winds its way down a mountainside. You take a chair lift up with a plastic sled and ride the sled down the trough. There are actually two slides, one for speed demons (Mike and Ben) and one for people with a survival instinct (Denise and Sam). After that we try out the mini-golf 'Challenge Course'. We've given Sam a two-stroke handicap because otherwise she refuses to play. She ends up playing so well that she almost beats us without the handicap. After being outside at midday for two hours we head indoors to the Notz Landing Diner for lunch. Thankfully they have free refills on giant drinks and we all quench our thirst; we are, after all, in a very dry place.

After lunch we're off to Red Rocks. The road there winds up into the mountain past many levels of parking and ends at the Visitor Center and Amphitheater. The Visitor Center tells us about when the amphitheater was built (1941) and about all the bands that have played there (to our delight the Grateful Dead hold the record for most concerts played at 25 - Jerry!). After learning about the amphitheater we step out into it and it is truly magnificent. The bench seats are situated between two huge cliffs of red rock and overlook not only the stage but the entire valley surrounded in the distance by cliffs. We climb all the way down to the stage (69 rows) and of course that means we have to climb up again. Ben runs up, Mike is close behind, and Sam and I rest twice. I'd learned in the Visitor Center that at Red Rocks there's only 80% of the oxygen I'd get at sea level, and that because it's so dry I should be drinking twice my usual amount of water and at least taking naps if not getting a lot of sleep. I've done none of that and find myself extremely tired doing things that normally wouldn't bother me. I mention this and Ben wonders about the Broncos and whether they have an edge when they play a home football game. Mike says the lack of oxygen doesn't apply to top athletes. I am not a top athlete.

After a while spent absorbing the view we head back to the campground. We leave the kids in the air-conditioned RV watching a movie and go to a nearby RV sales center; we're curious to see what the giant busses that we've seen at every campground look like on the inside. We're gladly invited to look inside anything on the lot, so we do. The busses amount to small and fancy apartments on wheels and we're impressed with both the design and the materials used on the inside. The one we like best is listed at $330,000. (For comparison ours lists new at $70,000.) The only thing I'm dismayed by is the driver's seat; I can't imagine steering one of these things. Our rental agent told us that anyone can buy one of these busses and drive off the lot; lessons or a special license aren't necessary. "Think about that," he'd said, "the next time you see some seventy-five-year-old guy zooming past you on the highway in one of those."We also looked at the smaller towable RVs (one has four bunk beds, a queen-size bed, and could easily be towed by, say, a red Ford pickup truck) and finally we look at a camper like the one Mike's family took cross-country when he was a kid. It's got a place to sleep and a tiny burner and is extremely hot inside; Mike's parents pulled this behind their station wagon with three kids across the desert, eating and sleeping in it every night. They didn't have cell phones so they stopped at pay phones to call ahead for campsites, and they went through a lot of ice which filled the cooler in the back of the station wagon. Having been on our current trip for a week and a half, I can only say, and I love them very much, that my in-laws must have been temporarily insane.

From there we're off to the grocery store. Menu-planning is important as we don't have a lot of food storage and very little refrigerator space. Mike and I have what amounts to a date wandering the aisles of the grocery store; one thing we're not getting is any alone time. We return and make a gourmet dinner (grilled salmon with balsamic fig sauce, grilled asparagus, and cheesy biscuits from scratch) from a cookbook that's come in very handy, Campfire Cuisine. Everyone goes to bed fairly early because tomorrow is an eleven-hour drive to Virgin, UT (outside Zion National Park).

Day 9 - Denver, CO (Tuesday)

2006-08-12T09:18:00.000-04:00

The RV park is beautiful, up in the mountains outside of Denver, the Mile High City. We are impressed by the scenery; the locals probably don't even notice it. There is a small hill with a walking trail outside our door and we go exploring; it's not more than a fifty-yard walk but the 'Warning - Rattlesnakes' signs give us a thrill. Mike and Ben take about a thousand pictures each. Once we get our rental car we decide to go to the Denver Zoo and then the Science and History museum. Originally we'd planned to go to Royal Gorge, Rocky Mountain State Park, and Pike's Peak but when we discover they're all at least 60 miles away we can't bring ourselves to do it. When you're driving huge distances between locations you don't want to do even more driving once you're there.

The Denver Zoo is a wonderful visit from start to finish. There is no traffic on the way into the city, the zoo parking is free, and the day is sunny and hot, but "it's a dry heat". Mike is not exactly thrilled to be at another zoo, but he knows it's in exchange for the Rock Hall and Wrigley Field. Surprisingly, every animal in the zoo is active, even though it's hot and the middle of the day by the time we get there. The animals are penned in by moats so there are no fences separating them from the camera and Ben gets a lot of great pictures. We are about ten feet from a rhino that was very interested in a pile of branches that had just been delivered outside its pen; we see two elephants getting hosed off along with a drink of water; a mother moon bear and her three cubs romp and play together. We've never seen animals this close-up or moving this much and we spend four and a half hours at the zoo. Since we'd only have about 45 minutes at the Science and History museum we decide to skip it and head back.

For dinner we try Woody's Pizza in Golden which turns out to be a great choice, mostly. It has the best deal we've ever seen: an all-you-can-eat soup, salad and pizza bar for $8.88. The salad bar is extensive and the pizza bar offers about ten different pizzas; although the variety is great they'll make anything you want. The only downside to this place (for me) is that it has televisions all around the perimeter displaying every sporting event possible. We spend the evening watching the Yankees game, poker, and tennis, and not really communicating all that much. On the other hand, we've had A LOT of quality time together, and I do love watching tennis.

Photos today, writing tomorrow

2006-08-09T22:39:00.000-04:00

Here are a bunch of photos from our visit to Denver. We haven't had time to write, but we have a long drive tomorrow to southern Utah, so we should each have some time to write about our recent activities. We're having a great time, and the weather here has been great. We went to the Denver Zoo, Denver Heritage Square, and Red Rocks.

Photos:
Denver Zoo
Heritage Square
Red Rocks
RV Park

Day 8 - Hill City, SD to Golden, CO (Monday)

2006-08-08T01:48:00.000-04:00

We're out of the campground by 9:15am but stop at the Crazy
Horse Memorial while we're still in the Black Hills. It's a fascinating
place; it was started shortly after Mt. Rushmore by the local Native
Americans who wanted to show that they had heroes too. Crazy Horse never
signed a treaty with the white man, never lived on a reservation, and was
stabbed in the back by a soldier under a flag of truce. The memorial is
carved into granite like Mt. Rushmore; it's a likeness of Crazy Horse on a
running horse, one arm raised in the air, hair flying out behind him. It
was started fifty years ago and so far they've finished his head which is so
big that all of Mt. Rushmore could fit in it. When it's completed it'll be
the largest sculpture in the world. They accept no government financing;
the sculptor believed that if they did the government would never complete
the work. He also believed that it was not right to use taxpayer money to
fund a project for the people. He worked alone for fourteen years, hauling
drill bits, dynamite, and hammers up 174 steps; one day he had to go up and
down 9 times because his decrepit compressor at the base of the monument
kept stalling. Leaving, I hope the memorial will be done in my lifetime; I'd
like to see it completed.
We're on the road again by 10:15 and into Wyoming by 11:15. The
land has evened out into a kiddie coaster of gentle slopes, not the wild
ride through the Black Hills. All we see is prairie and the occasional cow
for approximately 600 miles. Every once in a while there is a house or a
silo. Who lives out here? How remote is their house? What do they do all
day? It's beyond me. There are many places where evergreen trees have been
planted in rows of three, probably two hundred plants in all, fenced in on a
hillside. Is it to prevent erosion? Are they future Christmas trees? And
why are there what look like fences erected everywhere that do not connect?
I'd like to hop on the Internet and find out, but I'm driving.
Finally near Cheyenne houses appear. On one side of the highway
is a large trailer park, and on the other side is a development of very big
houses. In fact, the few houses I do see being built anywhere along the
highway are quite big, but I also see quite a few ramshackle houses and
trailers dotting the hills. Is there zoning? And where's all the money
coming from? Come to think of it, why is there almost complete highway
construction through South Dakota and Wyoming? Do they really get that much
traffic? Of course I shouldn't complain being from Massachusetts and the
Big Fiasco.
Because the land is flat we can see storms miles off. A great
black cloud will be in the distance and a grey curtain of rain hangs down
from it as lightning flashes to the ground. It's fascinating to watch that
as you drive in bright sunlight. As we near Denver I see more homes being
built and also huge shopping areas. The homes are oversized and the stores
are the usual. America is largely generic these days. We arrive in Golden,
CO, just outside Denver around 4:30pm. Our RV park is the nicest one yet;
flat paved sites, new pool, excellent laundry facilities, amazing views. We
plan tomorrow's activities, eat dinner, and Mike and I have an exciting
evening doing three giant loads of laundry while the kids stay in the RV
watching a movie. We are here for three days and really looking forward to
relaxing.

Day 7 - Hill City, SD (Mt. Rushmore) (Sunday)

2006-08-08T01:47:00.000-04:00

The next morning we eat breakfast early. There's a pancake tent
serving all-you-can-eat pancakes, sausage, and coffee for $2. It's a big
hit with the bikers; quiet time in the campground ends at 7am and some of
these guys are riding their noisy Harleys from their tent site to get
pancakes. We rent a car and head to Mt. Rushmore, hoping to avoid any more
motorcycles. It's not the bikers themselves but the incessant roaring that
is starting to bother us. Unfortunately bikers want to see Mt. Rushmore as
much as we do; there's a lane dedicated to motorcycles and the parking lot
is absolutely full of them. As we turn into the lot we see the monument; my
first reaction is that I thought it would be bigger. Of course perspective
is everything; we're still far away from it. The monument is well-done;
stairs lead to a walkway which passes under the fifty state flags and opens
into an observation deck. Below the observation deck is a museum where you
can learn about the carving of the sculpture. Ninety percent of the carving
was done with dynamite; the day we visit one of the original workers is
there. He was seventeen when he started working on what was his first job
helping to build the sculpture.
We take the Presidential Trail out towards the monument; from
various points you can see the heads directly above you. The entire
mountainside is covered in great chunks of granite which lay where they were
blasted so many decades ago. The likenesses are incredible given the tools
that were used to create them. Even Teddy Roosevelt's glasses look real and
that's quite a trick in granite. After the hike back to the museum we stop
for lunch and then pile back into the rental car for a trip to Deadwood, SD.
It's been recommended to us as a fun place to visit, and although it's a 45
mile drive we decide to go. Deadwood is where Wild Bill Hickock was shot in
a poker game (aces and eights was his hand); the town was one street in a
small gulch and some of it has been restored to look the way it did in the
1800's. First, however, we want to see an attraction called "Tatanka: The
Story of the Bison", one mile north of Deadwood.
Those of you who've seen Dances With Wolves may remember that Tatanka was
the Lakota word for bison. (Buffalo, we learn, are only native to Asia and
Africa, although the signs urge you to "call them what you want".) The
attraction is located at the top of a mountain and the scenery around it is
spectacular; it is surrounded by mountains and valleys and you can't see any
roads or buildings. There are tracts of pines along the sides of the
mountains; the valleys are smooth with short grasses and an occasional
shrub. Some of the mountains sport the tall granite that we saw at Mt.
Rushmore. Birds of prey hover on the strong wind currents. The setting
helps you to imagine how the Native Americans lived every day.
Inside is a small museum with a description of the bison and the many ways
in which the Lakota people used the animals (the Lakota call themselves the
Buffalo People). One of the Rosebud Ogalala tribe, Marshall Burnett, gives
a great talk on Native Americans in general and the Lakota tribes in
particular. He's very entertaining although his speech seems to be geared
more toward people who learned everything they know about Native Americans
from watching Gunsmoke. We hear that Bob Barker is Native American and that
the name Winona means first-born girl. He also tells us that the Sioux got
their name when French traders asked the tribe north of the Sioux what they
called their neighbors to the south as they were headed that way. They were
told the southern neighbors were called (and I'm sure I'm getting this
wrong) "namigdasu" but when they finally made their way south they couldn't
remember the name so they called them the Sioux. Good thing they didn't
remember the full name because it actually meant "Snake in the Grass"; the
northern and southern tribes were not friendly with each other.
After the talk we wander outside; there is a teepee encampment set up and
past that a life-sized bronze sculpture of a Native American bison hunt.
The animals are being run off a cliff, the warriors in pursuit. It's vivid
and startling, and is designed to show people how difficult and dangerous
the life of the Native American was. Kevin Costner has funded the sculpture
after his participation in a bison hunt in the movie Dances With Wolves. In
fact, it is his museum and some of the costumes from the movie are on
display inside. The speaker we heard tells us the Native American timeline
does not have BC, Before Christ, it has BC, Before Costner. The Native
Americans were horribly mistreated by the European settlers and that is a
part of our American history. Dances With Wolves was the first movie to
depict the Lakota and by extension all Native Americans for what they were,
decent people trying to make a living off the land, love each other, raise
children, and enjoy life.
After that very interesting and peaceful visit we decide to go into Deadwood
proper. As we near the main drag we see an ocean of motorcycles parked in
every possible spot. The street is choked with them and the sidewalks are
teeming with bikers. We inch along, staring out the window at so many men
in jeans and black leather, so many women in not much at all. I ask Mike if
he feels especially manly driving his Buick Le Sabre, which, when the kids
first saw it, was proclaimed the Grandpa Car. We find a parking garage and
get out; Mike wants to get a picture of the spot where Wild Bill was shot.
It is so loud that we can't hear anything. All the old-fashioned signs have
been covered over with vinyl signs announcing cheap food and booze. A
sidewalk band's lead singer is telling a joke; the words "Forget it, you
sons-of-bitches!" float over the kids' heads. They look at me and I pretend
I didn't hear it, so they inform me of what he said. I'm completely
overwhelmed by the constant jet-engine noise of the bikes, the cloud of
cigarette smoke that somehow fills the entire sidewalk, the casinos, the
bikers shouting friendly obscenities at each other, the acres of
over-exposed middle-aged flesh squeezed into deerskin bras and hot pants,
tight jeans and t-shirts. "Hey Mom," Ben says, "did you see that t-shirt?
It said 'Drugs may be the road to nowhere but at least it's the scenic
route.'" I try not to laugh. Then he says, "Did you notice we're the only
kids here?" And no, I didn't, but yes, he's right, and now I see that this
is not the place for us. Not today, not with a biker rally in town. I scan
the sidewalks and realize that if it weren't for the bikers there would
probably be only a handful of people in town. We're disappointed but there's
nothing we can do about it.
We'd seen a mini-golf place heading into town and that's where we go now; it's
a good one and the fountain drowns out the noise of the Harleys roaring up
and down the road. It seems that the point of these rallies is just to
ride, and whether they've come 1900 miles on their cycles or hauled them in
trailers behind their RVs, that's what they do. It's not a cheap hobby; the
guy from CT spent $500 getting his bike fixed; Sam overhears a woman saying
she spent $100 on riding gloves. Everything from the Leather Goods shop to
Chubby Chipmunk chocolates has a Welcome Bikers sign, and they're out in
droves, even in the antique shops. Mike says they remind him of peacocks,
and it's true - the bikes are so many different sizes, shapes, and colors,
and the bikers are all checking out each other's rides. It's an interesting
phenomenon but we've had enough, and we're glad they're all heading north to
Sturgis for a week. We're heading south to Colorado in the morning.

Day 6 - Sioux Falls, SD to Mount Rushmore, SD (Saturday)

2006-08-08T01:43:00.000-04:00

A ferocious thunder clap awakens us at 6:25am, five minutes
before our alarm goes off. Thank you, Mother Nature. Thankfully it's not
raining. During my morning shower Ben calls out what I think is "Mom!" and
I shout back "Yes?" I'm greeted with hysterical laughter and find out that
what he'd really yelled was "Scum!" We're on the highway by 8am and the
speed limit is now 75. Corn fields have become pasture and there are a lot
of cows, soon to be slaughtered, ground up with a hundred other cows, and
turned into your hamburger, which will be 56% corn.

As the miles go by the pastures and cows disappear. The terrain
turns hillier and the grass is short and yellow. This is prairie; Dances
With Wolves was filmed here. The few sturdy evergreens that dot the
landscape seem stunted; the wind is strong and rocks the RV constantly.
There's also construction all along the highway; often the two lanes funnel
into one and we're sandwiched between two eighteen-wheelers with Jersey
barriers on either side. A tight grip on the wheel is necessary; perhaps
the cut on my finger has healed so fast because it's been pressed together
for hours on end.

We've been seeing signs for Wall Drug for hours. "Wall Drug,
200 miles", "Wall Drug As Seen In The Herald Tribute", "Wall Drug As Heard
On Good Morning America". It's a pharmacy that's been around for decades,
and in the 1930's the proprietors decided to attract customers by offering
free ice water to those making the hot and dusty ride through South Dakota.
The owners littered the highways with billboards which stayed up until the
1965 Highway Beautification Act brought most of them down (you can see the
important work Congress was doing while the Vietnam War was going on). But
some of the signs are still out there and people have sent in photos of
themselves holding up Wall Drug signs at the Acropolis in Greece, in the
Arctic and Antarctic, in Vietnam. The photos are on the walls in the store
which is a block long and full of more schlock than you've ever seen. The
town of Wall subsists on tourism now, although it's also the beginning of
the loop to the Badlands. We decide to forgo that trip; after yesterday's
12-hour drive we'd like to get where we're going as soon as possible.

When we enter the Black Hills there's no flat land anymore; the
RV roars up steep inclines and brakes down again, up and down. Tall spires
of pines fill the mountainsides and the road curves constantly. Finally we
see the Mt. Rushmore KOA, and it's a fancy one. It's recently been acquired
by KOA's largest franchisee and millions have been put into it. The grounds
are huge and accommodate tents, RVs, vans and campers as well as small and
large cabins; there's a restaurant, swimming pool, water slide, mini-golf,
movie house, ice cream parlor, laundry, pizza shop, and a few stores. The
motorcycles we've seen on the highway across the state have multiplied
tenfold; they're here for the 2006 Harley Davidson Rally in Sturgis, SD.
One man tells us he's here from CT; he rode 1900 miles in 4 days and would
have made it in 3 if he hadn't broken down on the way. He walks as if he's
been on a horse for a week and once again I'm reminded of cowboys. We swim,
play mini-golf, go out to eat, learn some card tricks, and go to bed. It's
in the 50's and the RV temperature drops to 65. We're glad we brought some
fleece blankets.

The drive to Golden, CO

2006-08-08T01:14:00.000-04:00

Today (Monday), we drove to Golden, CO, outside Denver. However, before we
hit the road, we stopped at the Crazy Horse monument. I remember hearing
about this when I was a kid, so I was surprised to find that it is far from
complete. It took them 50 years to carve his face. As we learned at the
exhibit, this privately financed and family-run project has gone so slowly
that it has been passed down from one generaiton to the next already. The
first 14 years there was only one man, the sculptor, working on the project!
I guess they aren't going for the speed record.

The monument will be very impressive if they ever finish. At this pace,
perhaps my grandchildren will see it. We just saw the face...

The drive to Golden was uneventful. The scenery was vast rolling hills in
South Dakota and Wyoming. It was kind of boring. But, we're good at these
trips now, and so are the kids.

The campground in Golden is really nice, and we'll explore Denver tomorrow.
We are staying here 3 nights, which is a first for us on this trip.
Otherwise, we did some laundry tonight and just hung around.

Mount Rushmore

2006-08-08T01:09:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, we visited Mount Rushmore, as you can see from the pictures on
Flickr mentioned in my earlier post. It was a beautiful place. The whole
Black Hills area is gorgeous, with lots of rolling hills, some small
mountains, pine forests, and few people. Mount Rushmore was pretty
interesting, and we enjoyed walking around the monument. I spoke to a man
there who was one of the original workers from 1938 (he was 17 at the time).
The whole monument took 14 years to build, but he quit when WW II started
because he thought the funding would get cut on the project.

We then went to the Tatanka Bison exhibit. It was a beautiful spot, with
lots of information about the bison population, how the Native Americans
hunted them, and some nice artwork. Kevin Costner sponsors the whole place.
I guess Dances With Wolves really inspired him.

Tatanka was on the outskirts of Deadwood, SD. This was billed to be a place
where you would be reminded of the old west. Perhaps it was all the bikers
that had invaded, but the street was full of casinos and bars, which wasn't
what we were in the mood for. We went to play mini-golf instead, which was
much more fun. After then going out to dinner in Deadwood, we headed back.
It was a great day.

Lots of Photos, South Dakota, and too many Harleys

2006-08-07T02:09:00.000-04:00

I uploaded lots and lots of photos tonight. You can see them all here. Even if you looked at some of these tags before, there are new ones in the Football Hall of Fame and Akron Zoo.

There are also quite a few new categories, from both things we did before and recent visits: Wrigley Field, the Chicago Aquarium, a visit to funky Wall Drug in Wall, SD, or today's visits to Mount Rushmore, the Tatanka Bison exhibit, and Deadwood.

No time to write up information on our time in South Dakota, but it's been fun. We head to Colorado tomorrow. On the road, we should have a chance to put the words behind the pictures.

One note: The Sturgis motorcycle rally is happening all this week near Mount Rushmore. It was kind of cool at first to see all the motorcycles, but they crowded out the whole area. It's a big tourist thing for the local businesses, so they welcome them. But, the traffic and burbling engines were too much for us. It made our visit to Deadwood pretty much a waste, for example. Angelo assured me it would be lots of fun, but it didn't work out that way today. You'll see lots of motorcycles in the Deadwood pictures.

Photos on Flickr

2006-08-06T01:46:00.000-04:00

I uploaded some of our photos onto Flickr. You can see all of them here. If you click on the link for 'Tags' you can see some rudimentary categories, such as who took them and where they were. I'll get the pictures out of Ben's camera tomorrow. He's taken the most. You'll see some pictures from Wall Drug in Wall, SD. What a hoot. We'll write more about today's visit to Wall Drug and our arrival in Hill City, SD near Mount Rushmore tomorrow.

Photos from the Akron Zoo

2006-08-06T01:45:00.000-04:00

I added a link to a few more photos on Flickr from our visit to the Akron Zoo. They're also here. I'll have to figure out why Blogger isn't cooperating with us in getting photos uploaded directly. We have a good Wifi connection here, so I will at least upload the rest of our photos to Flickr tomorrow (I hope).

The Longest Drive

2006-08-06T01:43:00.000-04:00

Denise wrote a good post on our long drive on Friday from outside Chicago to Sioux Falls, SD. The only thing I have to add is that the kids have been great during these long drives. They have been watching movies, playing games on the Playstation, reading, and listening to their iPods. They have a lot to entertain them, and they probably haven't seen enough of the scenery. But, they are not complaining about the long drives, which is a blessing for us drivers. Sioux Falls is pretty much a stopping point onto somewhere else, either Mount Rushmore or the biker rally in Sturgis, SD. We are doing the same -- up early on Saturday to head toward Hill City, SD, next to Mount Rushmore. This leg was the longest of our trip, even longer than our false start on the first day. We are in the routine and can definitely handle the driving. I'm downloading new podcasts from NPR when I can, which keep Denise and I entertained while we drive. We've split the driving evenly so far, with each of us doing 3 or 4 hours at a stretch, generally.

Day 5 - Chicago, IL to Sioux Falls, ND (Friday)

2006-08-06T00:55:00.000-04:00

We've had a fabulous night's sleep in preparation for our longest drive of
the trip. We're up at 6:30am, drop off our rental car when Enterprise opens
at 7:30am, and at 8am we're where we wanted to be, on I-80 heading west.
Only 660 miles to go; eleven hours of driving plus stops for gas. It's
going to be a long day. (A note to those with teenagers: waking them up
every day at 6:30am on their summer vacation does not go over well.)

Now we're in the vast middle part of the country, where all we see for most
of the day is corn fields, barns, and an occasional cloud of dust lingering
behind a pickup on one of the dirt roads that skirt the highway. Some of
the corn fields have mysterious little signs that identify them as "AH1835"
or the like. No Butter And Sugar here. The amount of open space here is
different than anything we have on the East Coast; it's obvious that someone
from Montana could have wildly divergent political views from someone from
Manhattan. Gun control? Clean air? What's to worry? I'm listening to a
podcast with the three young men who started beyondpartisan.org; they're
urging for reasonable discourse. Is that so bad?

There is minimal traffic for most of the day. The only place we see a crowd
of cars is at a giant casino right off the highway in the middle of nowhere.
There are also a lot of For Sale signs; people are selling huge parcels of
land everywhere. Is there a connection?

Some amusing sights during the drive:

A bumper sticker saying "Eschew obfuscation."

A truck with an arrow on the back pointing left that says "Passing Side."
Another arrow points to the right and says "Suicide."

On one exit ramp there are three of those large blue signs that alert
drivers to Food, Gas, and Lodging. The signs have nothing listed
underneath, just a blank blue square. At the bottom of the exit ramp sits a
small barn and silo and nothing else is visible. Finally some truth in
advertising.

A sign reading National Dairy Cattle Congress. Didn't know they had their
own.

We drive and drive and drive. Breakfast and lunch are eaten in the RV; we
only stop twice for gas. At one of the stops we remove the drawer that has
been falling out and realize it's been installed incorrectly. Good thing we
brought the tool box; it's fixed in two minutes. The speed limit is 70; we're
making incredible time! By 6pm we are about an hour away from the
campground and decide to stop for dinner rather than wait. The wait staff
at the Ground Round is so very friendly that one of the kids remarks on it.
We will see that amiability again at the campground where everyone gives a
friendly wave and some take the time to chat. We are set up at the
campground by 8:45pmand decide to go for a walk. Unfortunately it's a small
campground penned in by fields of crops (which we can smell have been
recently fertilized with cow manure), an RV sales store, the highway, and a
gas station. Not exactly scenic but we're only here for one night. (There
are motorcycles everywhere and we're seeing signs for Sturgis 2006 - some
kind of rally, we guess. These people travel with their tents and
everything else they need on the back of a motorcycle; we are driving an
entire house. They are the modern cowboys, and the men look good in those
leather chaps.) We find the mini golf and do the nine holes, then head back
for bed.

Rain On A Hot Tin Roof.

This evening the air is cool and breezy, finally, so we open the windows
wide. Then we realize that with the shades up we have zero privacy.
Luckily the day shades let in air so we keep those down and open the two
fans in the ceiling; they act as attic fans to cool off the RV. The
campground is quiet and we fall asleep easily. Around 3am Denise awakens to
the sound of rain on the roof. She's also seeing flashes of lightning.
After a moment it occurs to her that if it's going to rain the ceiling fans
have to be closed; both of them are over beds. By the time those are closed
the rain is coming in the side windows so those get shut too. Suddenly
thunder arrives, great rolling claps and lightning flashing too. Counting
the seconds between lightning and thunder to see how far away the storm is
doesn't work; it's all happening at once. The thunder is startling enough
to make you jump, and the sound of the rain on the roof is deafening; we are
not separated from the elements by four-by-fours and insulation, an attic
and a roof. Sam sleeps through it all.

Day 4 - Cleveland, OH to Chicago, IL (Wed/Thursday)

2006-08-06T00:46:00.000-04:00

We're up and out of the RV park by 8:30am. We've learned to take navy
showers fast and pack our lunches the night before, because making a lunch
while lurching about the kitchen is not easy. We're off to Mokena, IL,
about a 6-hour drive. I listen to a podcast of Michael Pollan talking about
his new book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and he talks about how most of the
American diet is corn. Corn is in drinks, baked goods, processed foods, and
even in burgers because that's what the cows eat. He says a McDonald's
hamburger is 56% corn. The entire time I'm listening to this, about 45
minutes, I'm driving 65 miles an hour and passing field after field of corn.

Finally we near Chicago, the Traffic City. You think Boston is
bad? Everywhere we go, no matter what time of day, Chicago has traffic, and
most of it seems to be due to poor planning. The fact that huge trucks
barrel through the city night and day doesn't help. We hit a half-hour
traffic jam because our four-lane highway has to go through only two toll
booths. Two! By the time we get to the RV park we're tired, although it's
only 3pm. Our neighbor is cleaning a black electric guitar; we pray he isn't
going to play it at night. We're about twenty-five yards from an interstate
highway; there are trees scattered about and a lot of tents across the way;
directly in front of us are three porta-potties and a Lollapalooza Buffett
(sic) sign. Mike and Sam go for a dip in the uninspiring campground lake;
they're back in forty minutes. We have tacos for dinner, watch Eight Below,
and get to bed early. There's a tremendous storm that night with so much
lightning that at one point we think there's a police car in the RV park.
Later we read in the local paper that a woman in a house two blocks from the
RV park was struck by lightning and her home caught on fire that night.

The next morning we have our rental car by 8am, and lucky for us, the agent
is chatty; he tells us that Wednesday's Cubs game was called due to rain and
that it's being played Thursday as a double-header. That means the game we're
supposed to attend today is now a double-header, and it starts at noon, not
at 1:20pm. We drive thirty-seven highway miles to Wrigley Field; it takes
us an hour and forty-five minutes. Guess why. The Cubs lose to the
Diamondbacks 9-2; we leave after the seventh-inning stretch when the whole
park stands up to sing Take Me Out To The Ballgame loudly and off-key. (A
medical tip: when your pill bottle says "May cause drowsiness. Alcohol may
intensify this effect." don't have a beer at a ball game. You will fall
asleep in your seat.)

The Shedd Aquarium is our next stop, an attraction they obviously don't want
people to discover because there are no signs for it. There's a tremendous
line to get in that stretches outside, down the stairs, and onto the
sidewalk. A guard stands at the museum entrance, letting in a handful of
people every few minutes. Denise avoids this by using the Accessibility
Entrance and slipping into line when the guard's back is turned. Mike, Ben
and Sam have great fun calling her The Slimer but when she suggests they go
wait outside in the line for an hour they decline. The aquarium is
beautiful (a GEM according to our AAA travel guide) and we spend two hours
there.

Next we want to go to the Twin Anchors restaurant which had been recommended
to us for dinner; we head the two miles north to get there and what do we
hit? Traffic! Finally it occurs to us to call the restaurant and they tell
us they have a half-hour wait and do not take reservations. By now it's
6:30pm and we have a lot to do because we're leaving very early the next
day. We turn around and head south, back to Mokena. It takes us 15 minutes
to get back to where the aquarium is; we've spent 45 minutes driving 2 miles
north and 2 miles south. We finally get back to Mokena around 8pm; we grab
a quick bite at a Quiznos (overheard in line: "Everything here stinks; I'll
have gum for dinner") and get back to the RV to see that our guitar-toting
neighbor is having a party. It's a large group of young men standing around
drinking about five feet from the back of our RV. We've brought a
white-noise machine which drowns out the noise enough for the kids to sleep.
Unfortunately, Mike and Denise can hear everything; the country music, the
laughing, the man at midnight repeatedly screaming "Hang up the phone!", and
at 3am, women's voices in that apologetic goodbye tone ("Okay, well, we'll
call you") and the men still laughing and talking, oblivious to (or perhaps
desperately avoiding) the fact that the women want to go.

Chicagoland

2006-08-05T17:18:00.000-04:00

Time to get caught up on some posting. We've been busy having fun and
haven't had a chance to blog about our activities.

Our campground outside Chicago wasn't much to speak of. No surprise for an
urban location. Interesting crowd there, and they liked to sing along to
country music late into the night!

On Thursday morning, we rented a car to drive into Chicago. Luckily, I
mentioned to the person at Enterprise who picked me up that we were going to
the Cubs game, which was scheduled to start at 1:20 PM. He told me that he
had gone to the game the day before which was rained out. That made
Thursday's game a doubleheader, starting at 12 Noon. We figured out that in
fact it was a single-admission doubleheader. You don't see that at Fenway.
Our ticket was now good for two games!

Denise, however, would have none of that. We would only go to the 12 Noon
game, but that meant we had to hustle out the door to get there. There is
some major highway construction in Chicago, and our campground was south of
the City (in Mokena, for your Chicagoans). Wrigley Field is on the North
Side of town. YahooMaps said 36 miles, but it took us 90 minutes to get
there as we tried to avoid the construction. We missed the first few
batters, and it was already 2-0 Diamondbacks by the time we sat down.

Our tickets were great, but the game wasn't. The Cubs got killed, 10-2. We
left in the 8th inning. It rained a bit during the game, but not enough to
delay the game or get us too wet. Wrigley Field was pretty cool, with the
buildings across the street topped with bleachers to hold additional fans.
It was even more of an old-time park than Fenway, with no video screen to be
seen anywhere.

After we left the game, we went to the Aquarium, which was awesome. It was
huge, with beautiful exhibits on the Ocean, Lizards, and much more. It's on
the Museum Campus in Downtown Chicago, along Lake Michigan. Very pretty
spot, and I wish we had more time to explore there.

We tried to go to Twin Anchors for dinner (thanks for the suggestion,
Angelo), but the traffic was too much to bear in front of dinner and our
long drive home. We gave up and headed back for a quick dinner near the
campground. We knew we had to get up early the next day for the longest
drive of our trip.

Days 1, 2, 3

2006-08-02T22:36:00.000-04:00

Day 1.
We’re off to a good start. We leave the house at 9:30am, later than we’d hoped but still early. Driving out of Bedford we can hear things moving in the cupboards and at one point three of the drawers fly open at once. We’d gotten curtain tension rods to put across the cupboards but didn’t anticipate the drawer problem. Ben sits at the dining table with his feet propped against the drawers across the aisle, but this isn’t going to b e along-term solution. Nonetheless, we are excited to be underway and things go smoothly until the intersection of Rts. 495 and 90, when Denise says, “Oh my god.”
“What?” asks Mike, hoping it’s a small thing.
“I forgot my purse.” She says it with horror because she realizes what it means – we’ll have to go back for it. She can’t drive without her license and she can’t have Mike drive over 5000 miles by himself, tempting though that may be.
It’s a mistake that eats up two hours. On the plus side, Sam retrieves her forgotten drawing supplies and we grab some bungee cord and rope to tie those drawers down. Riding in an RV is like a combination of riding on a ferry and a bus; it rocks gently from side to side and the back has a lot more bounce to it than the front. If you’re the driver you feel like you’re in a car (which makes sense because the whole thing’s on a truck chassis).
We make it to Batavia, NY by 7:30pm; our first day has become a ten-hour day of driving but now we know we can do it. It isn’t until late evening that Denise says, “Oh no!” She’s also forgotten half her clothes (the ones she stayed up late washing and drying on Saturday night), all her hair clips and bands (to conquer what Ben calls the Medusa Look when she doesn’t blow-dry her hair), and her jewelry. Replacements will be purchased in Ohio when we rent a car. The queen of organization has been dethroned.

Day 2.
We leave Batavia at 9:15, not bad. We also do our first black water dump. If you’ve seen RV you can guess what our fears were, but it turns out to be very easy. The kids loved the RV park and were disappointed that we had to leave; it had swimming, basketball, a playground, a pool room, a video game room…we reminded them that the purpose of the trip is not to stay in an RV park in upstate NY.
Upstate NY quickly becomes rural; we pass miles and miles of vineyards. At first it’s charming but after two hours of vineyards we’re excited even to see a small clump of cows huddled together like a football team. Maybe they’re discussing the different vintages of clover. Maybe they’re planning an escape.
We’re getting used to traveling slowly, to getting passed by everyone, to letting everyone cut in, in other words, to not driving like we live in Massachusetts. The RV is wide and the mirrors stick out a mile; we come within inches of whacking them off at a few toll booths. The tolls themselves are incredibly expensive, $18 here, $25 there. Never mind the gas – we are reminded of a Daily Show segment where Rob Corddry drives his stretch Hummer limo out of the gas station and it runs out of gas before the back ends hits the street.
Nonetheless, we are enjoying the driving; we take two hour turns before stopping to stretch, use the bathroom, buy a cold drink, and get gas if we need it. (It’s a 57-gallon tank and we get 8 miles to the gallon.) We have iPods to listen to, and the kids alternate between those, DVDs, and the PS2. They can even lie down on the bed to listen to books on tape. As long as we’re driving they’re allowed screens; this is the best part of their vacation so far.
We arrive in Streetsboro, OH around 2:30pm. It’s a back-in site, another aspect we’re not looking forward to, but the RV area isn’t too crowded and with Mike directing it’s a breeze backing in. We call Enterprise for our rental car, and by 3:30 we’re on the road into Cleveland to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. One of us is very excited to be going, one marginally, and two not at all. Can you guess who? Unfortunately the Rock Hall closes at 5pm – what’s Rock and Roll about that? The place should open at noon and close at 3am! – so we hurriedly see what we can. There are so many costumes from different musicians, great fun to look at. We notice that most of the musicians are short and skinny – do they overcompensate with monstrous stages and elaborate sets?
We watch a video about the music scene in the 60’s in San Francisco. It covers the turbulent politic and cultural times, and we have to explain to the kids that long hair and beards were once unacceptable on men. They watch the video a while longer and then get bored and want to leave; Denise asks them to count the number of naked women on the collage next to the video. Sam finds three, one more than Denise had noticed. At least it keeps them busy until the end of the video.
We see Jim Morrison’s elementary school stories, Jimi Hendrix’s middle school drawings and so much more. One of us could have spent more time there, but the old-fogie Rock Hall is closing at 5 so we head out. It is extremely hot and humid in Cleveland and we’re glad to find an air-conditioned restaurant for dinner. Denise gets dropped off at Target to get some shorts and tank tops and we still have time to watch a movie together before bed.

Day 3
We’re off by 9:30am to Canton, OH to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Denise and Sam are going to drop the boys off and head to the Harry London Chocolate Factory in North Canton for a tour. The chocolate factory is very cold (chocolate starts to melt at 70 degrees, a fact we learn on the tour and which we should, but don’t, remember) and it is again very hot and humid outside. The tour is well-done; you can see the workers down below as you walk in a glassed-in hallway above the factory floor. This place supplies 90% of the chocolate to Disney World; a few years back Disney made chocolate CDs and sold them in jewel cases and the tour guide shows us the mold for that.
They also supply fundraisers; they make something called Joys that we’ve definitely seen before. The “oops”, candies that didn’t pass muster for aesthetic reasons, are served to the employees and as samples to the visitors, as well as being sent to various charities in the area. One little boy stares at the people who obviously have his dream job and says breathlessly “Can they eat the chocolates down there?” He’s told that employees who eat on the job are fired. Another boy asks where Willy Wonka is. We all enjoy the sight of two men wearing not only hair nets but beard nets. After the tour we buy some dark chocolate cherry cordial oops and are delighted to discover that they were mistakenly made with too much chocolate. We also buy assorted other chocolate to share during the trip. It isn’t until the cashier hands us our bag that we realize buying chocolate on a hot and humid day when you’re heading to the zoo for the afternoon.
Hello, Target. We purchase a small cooler and one pint of sorbet which does a good job keeping the chocolate cool until we get back to the RV. We pick up Ben and Mike at the Football Hall of Fame and head to lunch. After lunch Mike and the kids get dropped off at the Akron Zoo while Denise goes to the nearby hospital.

THE FINGER
My right ring finger hurt when I woke up Friday morning. Nothing major, it just felt like a paper cut near my nail. By that night it was swollen but still not hurting that much. But Saturday morning it was swollen and tender so I went to our walk-in clinic where they told me it was an infected cuticle, gave me a prescription for antibiotics, told me to soak it 3-4 times a day, and said I should come back in if it turned yellow (!) or got worse. I explained that we were leaving Sunday morning for a month. The doctor had a dubious look on her face but wished me well.
Soaking your finger in warm salt water 3-4 times a day while traveling in an RV is tricky, but I managed to do it. I started taking the antibiotics first thing Saturday so I expected the infection to be gone by Tuesday. No such luck. By Tuesday morning my finger was more swollen, throbbing, and yellow. Nice! Hence my visit to the emergency room of the Akron General Hospital. I checked in at 2:45. The woman at the desk was stymied by my driver’s license, thought my first name was Waldron because it’s last-name-first on the license, and asked if MA was Massachusetts. (When I said Yes, she asked me if I lived in Massachusetts. I have no idea what she was thinking.) After 25 minutes she called me back to take my blood pressure and temperature. Then I sat in Hell’s waiting room, a bare-bones area with no magazines to speak of and a TV blaring courtroom reality shows. I read two issues of Conde Nast traveler and a Woman’s Day magazine. A woman sat next to me and proceeded to start sobbing; she finally got up and moved away. Another woman had to go to the registration desk repeatedly for new gauze because the cut on her finger was bleeding profusely. An extremely obese man sat down across from me, slumped in his chair, and placed a hand towel across his eyes. Shortly afterward a woman approached him and handed him a Big Gulp cup into which he proceeded to vomit. I composed a haiku in my head which I don’t remember anymore, then I got up and told the woman at the registration desk that I was leaving. She said I should come back in the morning before all the people who were suffering heat stroke arrived, cut off my hospital ID bracelet, and wished me well.
That night I found a walk-in clinic on the Internet (most campgrounds have Wi-Fi) close to the RV park and called a taxi service to drive me there (the only downside to not towing a car is you have to take your house if you need a ride somewhere, and not surprisingly no one wanted to pack up and drive to a walk-in clinic at 6pm). I waited an hour and finally saw a doctor who took one look at my finger and said in heavily accented English, “Yes, you need new antibiotic.”
That was a relief to me; I thought he was going to have to do something more invasive.
“I going to cut your finger to drain. Come. Come with me.”
He led me over to a cot, told me to lie down, dragged the curtain around it, and called the nurse over, giving her a list of items that he needed as he went to write the prescription. She assembled them on a tray and he returned, calling her back once because he didn’t know how to open the scalpel. When I heard “scalpel” I started to worry; I thought draining was something that could be done with a needle or perhaps a tiny faucet. Then the doctor said, “I going to spray your finger. It very cold; it going to hurt. That is to numb. Then I going to cut your finger. That REALLY going to hurt.” And that’s what happened: spray, pain, cut, extreme pain. Then he started squeezing my finger, hard, to get out the pus that was in there, and that was also really painful, although when he giggled and said “Eeww, pus” both the nurse and I laughed.
So I missed a trip to the zoo and a quiet barbecue dinner with my family, and now I have a swollen and cut–up finger that I have to keep an eye on, and why did this all happen? Because I bit off a hangnail. I did it to myself. I gave myself the finger.

On the road early today...

2006-08-02T09:44:00.000-04:00

We were actually able to get on the road by 8:30 AM today. We all seem to get up early, even though things are quiet and dark in the RV. We are now on the road to Chicago, which is about 360 miles from where we stayed outside Cleveland. We'll take it easy this afternoon and tonight after we arrive, and then head into the city for a Cubs game tomorrow.

I gave up on uploading photos to Blogspot/Blogger. It always seems to time out. We'll put photos on Flicker and put links in the blog posts, at least until Blogspot works better.

The Verizon Wireless broadband works great. Denise is driving and I am catching up on some email and getting this uploaded. Pretty cool!

The Heart of Rock and Roll

2006-08-01T22:32:00.000-04:00

We've been busy. Sorry for the lack of posting. Some of you are getting impatient!

Internet access in these RV parks isn't always that good. So, don't get w0rried if we don't post too often.

We spent Sunday night in upstate NY outside Buffalo. We just slept there and left the next morning, although we slept in a bit after a long first day.

We arrived in Cleveland Monday afternoon. We rented a car and headed into Cleveland. We visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but didn't have as much time there as I would like. There is tons of good stuff there, but the kids weren't that interested. You know, Rock and Roll is so 'last year.'

We went out to dinner and then came home to watch a DVD of the old Battlestar Galactica show. It was too campy for me, but Ben liked it.

Today Anonymous and I went to the Football Hall of Fame in Canton. Denise and PieLover toured a local chocolate factory. The kids and I then went to the Akron Zoo. Denise went to go a doctor to have her infected finger looked at. She waited a while and gave up. Later this evening, she did get it taken care of. She's fine, but has to take a stronger antibiotic than was prescribed before.

We had some trouble uploading photos to Blogger. Anonymous took some pictures today, but I only had time to upload a few from the Football Hall of Fame. They're on Flicker. If we have a good Internet connection on the road tomorrow, I'll try to do some more.

Update: Here are some photos from the Akron Zoo on Flicker.

We are off to Chicago tomorrow. We hope to leave early and get there with plenty of time to spare. We have the RV routine down pat by now, so it shouldn't be too hard.

The best laid plans...

2006-07-30T18:48:00.000-04:00

A few things didn't go according to plan today, beyond leaving late.

As we started driving, we couldn't figure out how to turn on the DVD player. The kids really wanted to watch a movie, since that seemed like a highlight to them. Denise was trying everything, looking through the manuals, etc. I was trying to offer suggestions while driving. We finally got it figured out (although it still seems kind of mysterious). We had to consult the manuals several times to remind ourselves how certain things worked. Luckily, they are very complete. Campers Inn did a great job organizing the documentation and showing us around, but there are a lot of things to remember.

Then, we realized that everything slides around when you drive! We had kept the counters pretty clear, but we had to put away every single thing. And, some drawers would come open when we turned, I guess due to a heavy load shifing. The latches weren't strong enough to hold it back. Since we had an unplanned return visit home, we grabbed some bungee cords and used them and a tension rod to keep the drawers closed.

Also, making lunch while under way was kind of an adventure. We didn't want to stop as we were making up time. The kids and I were holding everything on the table while we got out the ingredients and made sandwiches. It was a team effort.

We'll get some photos organized tomorrow.

Late start...And another late start

2006-07-30T18:42:00.000-04:00

We got off to a late start this morning as we decided that we didn't have to leave quite as early as we thought. We were tired, and wanted to sleep in a bit. So, we got the final things packed up and pushed off at 9:30 AM. But, about 45 minutes later, Denise realized she had left her purse at home!

So, we turned around and got back home to get her purse. We ended up leaving again at 11:30 AM. This was much later than we thought, and we've been driving almost non-stop since, with just a couple of gasoline/rest breaks.

Right now, we are near Rochester and about 45 minutes from our first stopping point. We'll get there around 7:30 PM. This ended up being 10 hours of driving today, which is about as much as we'll ever do on this trip.

The kids have been great, and the time as gone by OK. Denise and I have switched off on the driving, and the kids have watched a movie, read some books, listened to music, and Ben even took a nap! Luckily, the kids don't get motion sick in the RV (at least so far).

Another day of driving tomorrow, and then a day to relax near Cleveland -- some good sights there like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and (nearby) the Football Hall of Fame).

A long day of packing

2006-07-29T22:56:00.000-04:00

We finally got everything packed. Both Denise and I are very organized, with long lists of things to pack. But, it took a lot longer than we thought to get everything together and get it all into the RV. The good news is that the RV has sooo much storage space. We didn't have trouble fitting things in, and could have brought more. The only really tight space is in the fridge and freezer. Those are small, and we'll have to adjust to having limited space there.

We get up early tomorrow and head to upstate NY. Everyone is pretty tired tonight, so we are finally just relaxing a bit before we turn in for the night.

Packing day

2006-07-29T07:29:00.000-04:00

Today's the day we pack up the RV. Denise did a lot of packing yesterday, but today's the day we have to really get everything in there and be ready to go first thing tomorrow. We have a couple of errands to run today, but we'll spend most of the day collecting all of our stuff together and finding places for it in the RV. It has a lot of storage space, but we have a lot of stuff! At this point, I'm just ready to get going!

RV photos

2006-07-27T17:45:00.000-04:00

Today is July 27 and we got our RV today. Hurray!!!!!! We are leaving on Sunday, a short two days from now. This afternoon I took some pictures so you can find out what our RV looks like inside and out.

Launch date

2006-07-26T08:59:00.000-04:00

I've done quite a few product launches in my day, so this one is pretty tame. But, today I plan to send out the invitations to many friends and family inviting them to our blog, WFRV. I wanted to have some content on the blog to get things started, and I hope that the rest of the family contributes regularly as I plan to. I know that Denise has one post to write on trip and route planning, and our son, Anonymous, is thrilled to be the official WFRV photographer with his new digital camera.

So, if this is the first post you see on WFRV, Welcome! And, wish us luck on the big adventure!

4765

2006-07-24T22:59:00.000-04:00

I finally recovered from getting most of my CDs onto my iPod. 4765 songs later, I finally finished. I got the Pie Lover to give me a bit of help, but I did most of it myself. You don't have to watch every CD get imported, but you do have to run back and forth to the computer to put in a new CD if you want to get through the hundreds of CDs I did. So, I am finally in the digital music era, with just about all the music I love. I skipped a few CDs which I don't listen to any more, but 4765 was enough!

The Mail Must Go Through

2006-07-24T22:42:00.000-04:00

I've spent a lot of time on technology, but there are also offline issues to worry about when you go away for so long.

We have various people who do some work at our house, and they don't do online billing. So, we need to get the bills from the guy who cuts our lawn and the guy who takes care of our pool, which we will keep up while we're gone. And, I get nervous if I let my mail sit for too long. So, my assistant at work is going to send us our mail a couple of times while we're gone. Then, I can catch up on our bills.

I pay all my bills online via Quicken. So, Quicken and my data files had to get moved onto my laptop. And, I need to bring my checkbook, stamps, etc. Luckily, I was able to get most of our billers (credit cards, utilities, phone company, etc.) to bill us online. I'll get an email when the bill comes out, and can go online to review it. Then, I can pay it in Quicken, like usual.

By having our mail sent a couple of times, we can also keep up with magazines, although I may also get some downloaded as we go. Zinio has many magazines that you can subscribe to (or buy single issues). Newsstand has lots of newspapers that you can download if you miss your hometown paper.

I relax more knowing that all this stuff is taken care of, so I guess I can't really get away from it all without keeping up with it all.

Update on technology...

2006-07-24T22:33:00.000-04:00

In my previous technology post, I had left a couple of open questions.

First of all, the iCarPlay Plus worked fine when I tested it. The sound isn't as good as you get with a CD or an iPod directly, and it is suceptible to FM interference. I think that in the wide open spaces it will work better than it does in the city.

I had hoped to have access to all my iPod libraries from one external hard drive connected to my laptop. Libra worked fine to manage the libraries, and it was no problem backing up the iPod libraries onto my external hard disk. However, iTunes wasn't very cooperative. The podcasts wouldn't get imported by Libra, so I had to set them up again. Also, each iPod has to be switched to synch up the library on the external disk rather than the one on its usual PC at our house. I may do this once we are underway if we really get into podcasting (or, we can just listen to the podcasts on our laptop...).

Also, after playing around with everything and wondering how good our Internet access will be while we're away, I will probably download The Daily Show and The Colbert Report from iTunes rather than try to watch them via our Slingbox. We'll see.

The Technology of Being Away from Home

2006-06-27T15:31:00.000-04:00

When we first started planning this RV trip, I didn't think through all the details that we'd have to plan for. One issue is how we stay connected and stay entertained while we're away.

My job is one where I can't be totally out of touch for a month. I can certainly slow down, and I plan to during this trip. But, I need to monitor my email at least every couple of days, and I need to be reachable by cell phone in the unlikely event of an emergency. The cell phone part is easy. They work pretty well, and just about everywhere. Just need to remember to pack the charger.

As for email, I have two solutions. Of course, I am bringing my laptop with me. In fact, for reasons described below, we are bringing two laptops. In many of our stops, I expect to be able to get Wifi access to the Internet. That will work fine to download my email and deal with it later. Web-based email (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) won't work as well here because, unless you can stay connected while you read it, you can't catch up on your email while your spouse is driving.

To solve this problem, I'll probably download my Yahoo mail into Outlook Express, delete the ones I don't want, and queue up my replies for later. Since I like to file the emails I want to keep, I'll have to file them away the next time I connect to a network.

For the more urban parts of the country, I decided to get Verizon Wireless BroadbandAccess. This will give me a decent speed Internet connection while on the road. When Denise is driving, I can read my email live, including my Web-based Yahoo mail.

In addition to work and personal email, I read quite a few blogs for work, news, and entertainment. Right now, I download these into Outlook via NewsGator. NewsGator also has a nice Web reader that synchronizes with their Outlook reader, so you can keep up with your RSS feeds either way.

I also have a Blackberry to read my work email and for on-the-go web access (got to stay on top of those Yankee games!). Due to the limited interface and slower speed, that's kind of a back-up plan.

OK, that's work. How about fun!

Our RV has a TV and DVD player, so we'll definitely bring a selection of movies to watch, including a bunch of new ones that each of us will pick out. Our son, Anonymous, will bring his PS2 so that he and our daughter, PieLover, can play some games. But, that's just the start.

We all got new iPods for this trip. I've been a digital music laggard, mostly due to my laziness in getting my hundreds of CDs onto an iPod. But, my new iPod video is great. I've got about 1500 songs on it so far, and a few video podcasts that I am interested in. Everyone else in the family got iPod Nanos as they don't have the extensive music collection I had. Denise really wants to catch up on some NPR podcasts.

But, our aging PCs at home were running out of disk space. You need lots of disk space if you are going to load up a 60 GB iPod and several 4 GB iPod Nanos. So, Denise and I each got a second internal hard drive for our computers. The kids hard drive recently died, so I replaced it with an 80 GB drive, which is plenty for them, for now. We were running out of disk space on some of the computers anyway, so this was overdue.

With all this additional storage space, music we download from iTunes, music I rip from my CDs, and the need to get all this stuff mobile with my laptop, I decided to buy an external 250GB Iomega 33215 Hard Drive. This can backup everything of importance on our home PCs and bring our music collection with us.

In order to juggle multiple iPod libraries on one PC, I recommend Libra. It lets you have one copy of iTunes with multiple separate user libraries of music and also to import music libraries from an external hard disk. This will let us use one of our laptops with the external drive to synch up any of our iPods, each with our own music collection.

To listen to our iPods through the radio in the RV, I bought a Monster Cable iCarPlay Plus. This lets you play your iPod through a nearby FM radio and charge it at the same time. To be honest, I haven't tried this yet, but the reviews on Amazon were quite good.

In addition to DVDs, the PS2, and iPods, I plan to use the Verizon Wireless BroadbandAccess to stream video from one of our two Slingboxes. These let you watch and control your TV at home. Ours are hooked up to two of our Tivos, so we can watch shows we record at home while traveling. You need a decent speed broadband connection, at least 200 Kbps. But, we'll have that with Verizon BroadbandAccess and when connected to Wifi. We can't fall too far behind on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report! And, of course, the occasional Yankee game when Denise lets me.

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned two laptops. The main reason is for no fighting! I expect that I may be dealing with email quite a bit in batch mode when Denise is driving. And, if the kids want to play a computer game, watch video via the Slingbox, practice their foreign languages on the Rosetta Stone software we bought, or write up a post for this blog, they'll need a laptop, too. So, two seems to be a minium.

That was quite a bit more than I expected. We might even take a nap or read a book once in a while!

On a future sequel to this post, I'll talk about what I did to help make it easier to keep up with our snail mail and bills while we are on the road.

pie a la road

2006-06-08T07:01:00.000-04:00

Dear bloggers, it beseth me, the lover of pie. A few things you should know about going on a trip like this:

1.) pack the essentials, an everything you need to have fun while driving
2.) MAKE SURE YOU PLAN YOUR TRIP AHEAD OF TIME
3.) Be ready for a lot of walking
4.) If you start a blog, make sure you tell people about it
5.) Remember, the trip is about going to see landmarks, not to drive around in an r.v.
Now about my family:
My dad: bad singer, (although better than mom) clean person, (he was brought up that way). Nickname: Nerdy McNerd Mcgeek Mctronicle. (Made by me, the lover of pie.)

My mom: like I said, bad singer, worse than Dad, makes a joke out of EVERYthing, and thinks her jokes are HILARIOUS, (which they’re not). Nickname: Thinks-my-children-will-grow-up-to-be-president. (Which we won’t.)

ME: lover of pie, as you may have noticed, loves a good laugh with her friends. Nickname: Pie-lover

Travel plan

2006-06-04T22:06:00.000-04:00

We did the first draft of our travel plan today. Here it is:

July 27th - We pick up the RV in NH
July 28th - Mike's last day of work -- travel to PA
July 29th -- We spend the day packing
July 30th -- We hit the road! Destination -- Byron, NY (just for a stop over)
July 31st -- We stop over in Streetsboro, OH, outside Cleveland. There are a few things we want to see in this area -- Cleveland Zoo, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Football Hall of Fame (in Canton)
We stay in the Cleveland area through the morning of August 2
August 2 -- We drive to Mokena, IL, outside Chicago
August 3 -- In Chicago, we take in a Cubs-Diamondbacks game in Wrigely Field
August 4 -- Back on the road to Sioux Falls, SD for a stopover
August 5 -- Continuing on to Hill City, SD, near Mount Rushmore
August 6 -- Spend the day at Mount Rushmore
August 7 -- Drive to Golden, CO, outside Denver
August 8 -- Red Rocks Park, in Morrison, CO
August 9 -- Another day in the Denver area
August 10 -- Drive to Virgin, UT, near Zion National Park
August 11 - 13 -- Explore Zion and Bryce Canyon
August 14 -- Drive to the Grand Canyon
August 15 -- Another day in the Grand Canyon
August 16 -- Drive to Santa Fe, NM
August 17 -- Santa Fe
August 18 -- Drive to Oklahoma City, OK
August 19 -- Drive to Villa Ridge, MO (outside St. Louis)
August 20 -- St. Louis
August 21 -- Drive to Santa Claus, IN (you'll have to ask Denise...)
August 22 -- Explore the area, and then drive to Rising Sun, IN (near Cincinnati)
August 23 -- Cincinnati
August 24 -- Drive to Gettysburg, PA
August 25 -- Gettysburg (can you believe Denise is willing to go there?!)
August 26 -- Drive home (and gee, it's our anniversary!)
August 27 -- Empty the RV
August 28 -- Return the RV to New Hampshire

Now, onto the detailed reservations. It's time to get organized. We've got to put some detailed trip plans in place and start to think about packing.

Deja Vu all over again...

2006-05-24T19:04:00.000-04:00

It was back in 1972 when my family set out in a station wagon with a pop-up camper for a six-week trek across the country. Although that was a great experience, it did have its ups and downs. This time it will be different -- the monster RV will be much more comfortable. The kids will be entertained by TV, DVD, PS2, iPods, etc. So, Mom and Dad can just relax, right? Well, we'll see. It should be a great trip, and there will no doubt be many adventures along the way.

Right now we are finalizing our plans and preparations. We have to plan on how our life carries on back home (bills, etc.), and I'll have to spend some time calling in to work. But, with cell phones, Verizon Broadband Wireless, and WiFi hot spots, we should be able to stay connected.

Our trip plans so far...not necessarily in order

2006-05-24T10:59:00.000-04:00

Cleveland, Oh
Chicago, IL
Mt. Rushmore and the Badlands, SD
Red Rocks and Palisades, CO
Zion and Bryce National Parks, UT
Grand Canyon, AZ
Santa Fe, NM
Santa Claus, IN
Cincinnati, OH
Gettysburg, PA