Trip Update #3 - East Coast Swing (Virginia to Massachusetts)

Our Virginia experience started off with a Civil War stop at Appomattox Court House, where we visited the house and stood only feet from the table where Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant near the end of the Civil War. (This is considered a symbolic end to the war as there were still a couple of southern Confederate armies still fighting in the southern theaters). This was the first of several Civil War history stops for us, which are just about everywhere throughout Virginia. We then spent several nights in the Charlottesville area, which marked the beginning of our “Trip through Hallowed Ground” – this is a guide book that traces the Old Carolina Road (U.S. 15) from Charlottesville, Virginia to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and lays claim to more president’s homes, colonial sites, revolutionary war sites, civil war battlefields, African American history sites, and National Park units than any other road in the United States.



Charlottesville is home to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and the University of Virginia, which he founded after his presidency. Monticello was well worth the visit, situated high on a hilltop overlooking the Blue Ridge foothills – though the house tour was good (Thomas Jefferson was a self taught architect), we especially enjoyed walking the gardens surrounding the plantation house and learning more about the man’s interest and experimentations with farming and horticulture. Charlottesville is a big time college town and has a great walking mall downtown with a wide variety of cuisine that we made sure to sample.

(University of Virginia Rotunda)

From Charlottesville we headed north and stayed at a Passport America park outside the town of Madison. Wooded sites are especially nice when the sites are spaced far enough apart so you don’t feel like you’re on top of your neighbor. While in Madison, we toured another one of our Founding Fathers’ plantations – James Madison’s Montpelier, which is in the midst of a complete restoration. All of the money for the restoration is coming from private sources and the tour they give is unique in that you can see the restoration work being performed and how they use forensic analysis and archaeology to determine what the original structure looked like (there had been many additions and modifications over the years). Photo at left is the Liberty Temple - below the temple is an ice storage area (the man was practical, too!) that provided cool refreshments for the many guests all summer long. The James Madison museum in nearby Orange was also worth a visit and we had it all to ourselves.

The town of Madison is also a great place from which to explore Shenandoah National Park. We spent the better part of a day driving Skyline Drive down the backbone of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the following day hiked a classic route up Old Raggedy, a mountain within the park that requires a fair amount of scrambling over and under granite boulders and squeezing through narrow clefts in the rock. We were rewarded at the summit with awe-inspiring views of the Blue Ridge mountains and Virginia piedmont to the east – this is beautiful country. Our feet ached so much the next day, we were inspired to buy some more supportive hiking boots when we got to the D.C. area.

From Madison we drove eastward toward D.C. and landed at Prince William Forest, which is a unit of the National Park Service, and is located just about halfway between D.C. and Fredericksburg. We spent more than a few days here (maybe a little too long) due to the long list of sites to see. We only rode the subway (the Metro) to the National Mall one day and were a little discouraged to find out how swamped all the attractions were with student groups. We weren’t able to get up into the Washington Monument or get a tour of the U.S. Capitol as they had already given out the allotment of tickets for the day. I think we’ll try and pass through D.C. again on our way south to Florida in October and hit some of the things we missed.

We did manage tours of the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court Building…the main hall of the Library of Congress is truly stunning with all its frescoes. Of course Debbie tested the security of the Supreme Court when she had forgotten to take her knife out of her purse. From then on, you could see two tourons throwing "something" into a flower pot before they entered a Federal building, suspicious behavior?! While we were in the area, it was hard to resist more civil war battlefields including Manassas (Bull Run), Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville (where Stonewall Jackson was killed due to friendly fire). We also enjoyed a day riding our bikes along the towpaths of the Chesapeake and Ohio (C & O) Canal near Great Falls on the Potomac River. We even took an authentic boat tour where they lowered, then raised the boat in one of the 22 locks. We spent another day at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s beautiful plantation home overlooking the Potomac near Alexandria. We were amazed at the state-of-the-art museum/education center at this place, including three separate theaters with one in which the seats rock and faux-snow flakes fall from the ceiling. One thing is for sure…there is a staggering amount of things to do in and around our nation’s capital.

While we were in D.C., we decided to spend our fifth anniversary at the beach so we took the interstate leaving D.C., skirted around Baltimore, zipped across the northern tip of Delaware, and then made a beeline across southern New Jersey to the seaside town of Cape May and the Jersey (say “joy-zee”) Shore. We never expected so much agriculture in southern New Jersey, but much of it is farm after farm, little towns, and roadside fruit and vegetable stands. Cape May has some great beaches right in town. We were surprised that you had to buy a $4 tag to even walk onto the beach – you also had to pay for parking, whether it be in a lot or meters. Turns out the money from the beach tags is used to defray the costs of pumping sand every two years from offshore areas onto the beach to counteract the forces of winter storms and erosion. There are many jetties along the Jersey shore, which have been created to attempt to thwart the transport of sand along the coastline. While in Cape May, we made sure to comb the beach for "Cape May Diamonds" and found some nice ones...these are quartz crystals that have been polished by the wave action. Just north of Cape May is another resort town, called Wildwood, and an hour north of Cape May is Atlantic City. We spent the better part of a day in Atlantic City walking the boardwalk and bouncing from casino to casino in search of the elusive $5 blackjack table….Debbie finally found one and had to wait a ½ hour to get a seat at the table. She finished ahead enough to pay for a nice dinner, parking (this was a first at a casino, like they don’t get enough of your money inside the casino!), and we went home with $8 in our pocket. Atlantic City was a lot of fun, and a much different feel from Las Vegas…nothing like walking out of a casino, going for a stroll along the ocean, and breathing in the salty sea air.

From Cape May we made a beeline to western Massachusetts, driving just about the entire length of the Garden State Parkway. We parked the trailer at Mary and Boyd’s house in Westhampton for about 11 days while we ran errands, took care of some maintenance stuff on the truck and trailer, helped out with some projects around the house, and hung out at the pool. During our July 4th barbecue at the house, we had a little drama when a high voltage line was severed by a fallen tree limb and lay across the driveway. The authorities said no one could leave until the power to the line was cut, so friends and family were stranded for awhile before they could leave and get to the fireworks shows, etc. Seven hours later, power was restored and life was back to normal. On July 5th we packed up our show and hit the road bound for Scarborough, Maine, where we spent a week with the Leslie clan having fun in the sun. Stay tuned for our Maine travels…they are still in the works.

Trip Update #2 - The Deep South / Heartland Tour (New Orleans to Frankfort, Kentucky)

To say the very least, our trip got off to an auspicious start. We left New Orleans about 4 days later than planned when upon pulling out of the RV park, our slider hitch bound up and was bent to the point where we had to replace it…luckily, nothing happened to the trailer itself (we were able to safely park it again) and there was a display model availalble at an RV dealership in Metairie, so we swapped out the hitch and were able to hit the road for good on May 5th. Luckily, the hitch was still under warranty, so we didn’t have to go out of pocket. For awhile there, we thought maybe the voodoo powers that be just did not want us to leave New Orleans.

From New Orleans we headed north beyond Baton Rouge (french for “red stick”) up the Great River Road (U.S 61), across the Louisiana border (we thought we had left the state for good this time) and into Mississippi. We pulled into Natchez State Park (beautiful wooded campground on a fishing lake) and noticed one of the trailer tires was extremely low…we were lucky we didn’t have a blow out. One of the tires had worn very badly (we could see the steel belts in one spot) and needed replacement…we put the spare on and saw the sights in Natchez (antebellum mansions, Mississippi River views, historic downtown for walking, and a cool blues joint/restaurant called ‘Biscuits ‘n Blues’). No one could help us in small town Natchez, so we drove another fifty miles north to Vicksburg. After we spent a day touring the Vicksburg Military Park (civil war) and the historic downtown/waterfront area (photo on left is the Old Courthouse), a local garage checked the toe-in and confirmed the trailer axle was out of alignment (possibly due to hitting a curb at the Walmart in Prince George, B.C. last summer), which was causing the tire to wear unevenly. They put us in touch with a big rig truck facility in Monroe, Louisiana that had the press that could bend the axle so that it had the correct toe-in and camber. So, here we were headed west, back into Louisiana. $450 later, we had two straight axles on the trailer and a new tire, and after spending one night in Monroe, we headed north into Arkansas, another state neither one of us had ever visited. We were headed to see some long lost friends in Little Rock.

After staying a night at Cane Creek State Park, another beautiful campground on a gorgeous lake, we pulled our rig into Tom and Martha’s place on the outskirts of Little Rock. Tom had to break out the chain saw and fall some small ones so we could wedge our camper in, but the end result was a primo spot at “Rains State Park” for several nights. We first met Tom in 1999 when we were all visiting Sacramento for a soils engineering workshop - Tom proudly lays claim to being the matchmaker that brought us together for the first time at Fannie Ann’s in Old Sacramento. We enjoyed the Hot Springs area for a day, touring the historical bath houses and going on a "duck" tour. The "duck" is a WWII era amphibious vehicle that they've converted to give tours. Tom and Martha brought us to an Arkansas Travelers minor league baseball game where we ran into our good friend, Ted Danson (Sammy) who was there with his wife Mary Steinbergen (sp?). So, after the game, Debbie proceeded to play paparazzi and rushed right over in his face and snapped this photo! Just kidding, She stayed her distance and used a zoom along with MOST of the other people. We also toured the Clinton Presidential Library (referred to as the President's "double-wide" by some of the locals because of its boxy architecture) which was quite impressive and included a close replica of the Oval Office. It was time to say goodbye to our gracious hosts and friends and head north to the Arkansas Ozark town of Harrison.




Harrison is only miles from the pristine Buffalo River (designated a National River), which flows unimpeded (no dams) for about 135 miles (http://www.nps.gov/buff/). It was May and there had been some decent rains recently so we decided to float the 25-mile stretch called ‘Ponca to Pruitt’ on the upper part of the river with one overnight. We paid an outfitter to move our truck from the put-in to the take-out, which worked out great. The river in this stretch is lined with deep woods, and towering limestone bluffs with alternating sections of rapids and pools. Box turtles were everywhere on downed logs and rocks lining the banks. Blue herons glided from fishing spot to fishing spot as we chased them down river. We even had the opportunity to negotiate some rapids (Class I) in our inflatable Sea Eagle Paddleski, which was a first. It handled great and we’re both curious how it will do in bigger rapids. Even though it had rained recently, we had to get out of the boat in a couple of spots and tow it over the shoals – we could have used about 6 more inches of water. One interesting river stop was a short hike to scenic Hemmed-in-Hollow Falls. We were glad we floated this popular stretch during the week as we could imagine the “combat paddling” that would ensure during the weekend. This river was everything we thought it would be – a real treat.

From Harrison, we drove north out of beautiful Arkansas and crossed into Missouri. Neither one of us had ever been to the hilly Ozark town of Branson, and we only stayed here a couple nights. Branson is very developed with its outlet malls, restaurants, and seemingly endless country and western theaters, but also has several large lakes/state parks nearby for water sports. We weren’t particularly interested in any of the shows and prices were steep, but we did enjoy a street fair in Old Branson.

From Branson, we headed east on an unremarkable trip across southern Missouri. We crossed the Mississippi River, immediately followed by the Ohio River at Cairo, which brought us into western Kentucky. After a long day of driving we crashed for a night in a Walmart parking lot, then drove east to Bowling Green the next day. Bowling Green is home to the General Motors Corvette Assembly Plant (the Cadillac XLR is also assembled here). For $5 you get a guided one-hour tour of the assembly lines where they turn out 150 Corvettes a day, looking better than ever. Neither one of us had ever been through an automotive plant before, so it was a great experience, especially when manufacturing in the U.S. is in decline. Also worthwhile was the Corvette museum across the street, where for an extra $500 you can take delivery of your new Corvette with a special ceremony.

Just a short drive from Bowling Green is Mammoth Cave National Park. This is the longest cave system in the world, which is its main claim to fame. What Mammoth doesn’t have a lot of are stalactites/mites and other formations. Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico is still our caves favorite, with Wind Cave in South Dakota a close second.

From Mammoth we headed northeast into the beautiful Kentucky Bluegrass region with stops at Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace and his boyhood home. We stopped in Frankfort for several nights while we visited with Deb’s cousin Peter and wife Anne over the Memorial Day weekend.

Peter showed us the town and the surrounding areas including the state capitol building, Rebecca Ruth’s Candy (love those bourbon balls), the Kentucky Horse Farm, and the Woodford Reserve bourbon distillery. The Kentucky horse country is beautiful with elaborate barns that are probably nicer than many people's houses.

Also while we were in the area, we took a day trip to the Louisville area to have dinner with Deb’s high school friend Laura and her husband Dan at 4th Street Live (a really unique downtown nightlife scene), and also to tour some of the local attractions. Laura and her family left the CA life because it was getting too built up and crowded, for the mellower life of Kentucky about 4 years ago and they love it. They are currently building a new house on 5 acres in horse country which we can't wait to see our next time through. Next, it will be time for the horses!

We especially enjoyed the tour of the Louisville Slugger factory, where they craft many of the professional’s bats, and a visit to Churchill Downs (Kentucky Derby fame) to watch a few thoroughbred races.

We spent our final night in Kentucky at beautiful Natural Bridges State Park to hike and bike, then headed into Virginia deep into the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Trip Update #1 - The Big Easy

Most of you probably already know that we put our travels on hold temporarily last November and worked for a consulting engineering company (Professional Services Industries, a.k.a. PSI) in the New Orleans area for a period of about 6 months. PSI is a nationwide company with a hundred or so offices across the country and employing nearly 2,500 people. Their core business is geotechnical engineering, construction materials testing and inspection, and environmental consulting. We helped them out with a couple of large Corps of Engineers levee and shoreline restoration projects, in addition to a backlog of commercial and industrial projects that developed after Katrina. It was a great opportunity for both of us…the work was good, the people were friendly and fun, we were able to share a ride into the office in the morning, and fortunately, we (and our condo on wheels (the “C.O.W”) didn’t get hit by a tornado or hurricane. (While we were there, however, a twister ripped through a section of New Orleans, not too far from the downtown area, leaving a path of destruction in its wake). Our stay fell outside the hurricane season in the Gulf, which generally runs from May or June through November, though there is always the chance that a rogue storm could hit outside this time frame. One thing about RV-ing in the New Orleans area is that there are few places to stay long term because of a combination of an influx of temporary workers (mostly construction workers) to assist in the hurricane recovery, but also people displaced from their homes and staying in FEMA trailers…also, there are relatively few RV parks to begin with. We stayed at a park outside the small town of Hahnville right on the west bank of the Mississippi River, about a mile down the road from a lovely row of petrochemical plants and a nuclear generating station.

One of the highlights with PSI was the annual Crawfish Boil…we weren’t brave enough to suck the crawfish heads, but managed to wolf down a few of the tasty mudbugs. In an act of incredible clumsiness, Marty managed to sprain his last good ankle playing volleyball with the gang. (Thanks for snapping those photos of me in agony, Connie!…that will definitely drum up a lot of interest for next year’s event..ha!)

Carnival season always begins on January 6th , with Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) falling on the day before Ash Wednesday as the prime event. Thanks Malay for showing us a great time during Mardi Gras. We rubbed shoulders with the masses at several of the big Mardi Gras parades including Endymion, Barkus (where dogs are dressed up in costumes), Zulu, and a couple of others we can’t remember the names of. The carnival members are collectively known as a “krewe” and spend a lot of their own money to be involved in the parades and to have the right to ride on the floats. The floats were unlike any others we had seen, very elaborate, and especially beautiful at night. And the amount of beads and other “loot” they throw from the floats is absolutely amazing – Debbie had so many beads, medallions, etc. around her neck one time she was literally walking around all hunched over before we freed her of some of her treasure. We spent Fat Tuesday hanging with Malay, Brittany Spears ( a.k.a. Megan) and K-Fed down on Bourbon Street with all the rest of the crazies and loved every minute of it. That is definitely something we’ll never forget. Oh, and the Hand Grenades and Hurricanes were refreshing as always!

We seemed to always end up in the French Quarter (not flooded during Katrina because it is on the river’s natural levees or high ground) when we got the itch to do something, I guess because its one of those “one in a million” kind of places and always seemed to lure us back with the interesting shops, galleries, architecture, food and music (and hand grenades!) There is always something going on, and new places to explore. In addition, there is an incredible amount of history in the French Quarter. When Deb’s parents came to visit in March, we went on a great historical walking tour of the quarter…it was free and narrated by a National Park Service ranger. The four of us also went on a carriage ride and took a river cruise on the steamboat Natchez, where they narrated a history of the waterfront area from the French Quarter down to the site where the Battle of New Orleans occurred during the War of 1812.

In April they have the French Quarter festival, which is a great opportunity to sample a wide variety of New Orleans’ unique cuisine and listen to some fantastic local musicians….this one’s free! Then, two weeks later is the internationally renowned Jazz Fest, which runs for two consecutive weekends.
Our friend Dan flew down from Sacramento to partake in Jazz Fest with us…it was another great opportunity to chow down on some delicious food (fried soft shell crab Po’ Boys, alligator sauce piquant, and crawfish bread were some of our favorites) and world class music. Thanks to Sabrina on giving us the lowdown! We saw Van Morrison, Lucinda Williams, Doctor John, and JJ Grey and MoFro (who?), in addition to numerous others.

While Dan was visiting we also took an eco-swamp tour in the Atchafalaya River basin. There were only five of us on the boat we rode into the swamp, so we had the opportunity to have a lot of interesting discussions regarding the wildlife and preservation efforts with our guide…he was an especially strong opponent of the logging of cypress exclusively for mulch. We didn’t see any gators, but we did see a ton of birds, some snakes, beavers, and nutrias. Much of the old-growth bald cypress was logged years ago, but some of the massive trees remain and stand sentinel over a swamp that is absolutely teeming with life.

Other highlights of our visit to New Orleans included the city zoo which had a great exhibit on the Louisiana swamp, white tigers, and even a white alligator.

Also, there was the Barataria Basin Preserve (Nat’l Park Service) just south of the city, where we had the opportunity to see a lot of alligators in their natural environment.

The 22-mile long causeway across Lake Ponchartrain (I think the longest water crossing in the Americas if not the world, maybe) is an engineering feat and was a pleasure to ride across…we’re just glad we don’t have to drive it every day! Lastly, driving through the flooded portions of New Orleans was a sobering experience. Recovery seems to be extremely slow and the future of a good portion of the city seems to hang in the balance. The land is geologically subsiding and sea levels are rising, not a good combination to say the least (http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0708/feature1/). The people we met in New Orleans, though, have a lot of pride in their city and local culture, rightfully so…and there’s little doubt in our mind that their resilience will play a large part in the future of this extremely fun and historic city.