040914 We're HOME!!!!

That's the text message I sent to our children when we finally had "The Traveling Koala" parked in her place in the driveway.

This will be my last blog associated with our grand adventure of traveling across America from Richmond, VA to the Pacific Ocean and back, safely I might add. 

Outside of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, this represents all the new states The Traveling Koala either camped in, or drove through during our odyssey across this wonderful land.  There is presently a hole for Arkansas and I have no idea when I'll ever visit it.  Kentucky will probably be added when we take out trip to Yellowstone.  I suspect we'll be in Florida next winter.

We sojourned in Michigan for 3 days.  This allowed us some down time, as well as an overdue visit with our daughter and son in law.  We left Michigan on April 7th and drove the non interstates until we arrived at Gallipolis, OH.  This city is on the opposite bank of the Ohio from West Virginia.

After a brief time on US 35 in WV, we got on I-64 which we mostly stayed on until we got to I-295 in Henrico, VA. 

We certainly were glad to finally get home.  Our road trip lasted for 44 days.  Took us 24 days until I could put my feet in the Pacific Ocean.

We've now seen a pretty good portion of this great land.  The variety of terrains we drove through were so different.  We went from the near flat, but heavily wooded eastern Hanover (which even in the dead of winter, is relatively green, to the sandy beaches of the City of Angels, Los Angeles.  In between, we drove through the Great Valley of Virginia (Shenandoah), the green mountains of

Virginia, Tennessee, extreme northwestern Georgia and northern Alabama.  There were the rolling hills and then relatively flat lower Alabama and Mississippi, along with northern Louisiana.  Northeastern Texas was rolling hills, trees and some open land.  As we drove on a diagonal down to San Antonio, the land began to flatten out, and get dryer, and for the most part, browner.  It stayed this way all the way to Los Angeles.

There were numerous mountains/ranges along the way, but most of the highways went around them.  Also, most of the mountains seemed to be rocky, with little vegetation, and certainly no trees.

Where there weren't mountains, we found high plains, plus the Mojave Desert covered much of southern California.

And when not in the Mojave Desert, there was Death Valley which includes the lowest point in the western hemisphere.

There were the White Sands at Alamogordo, NM, which is not sand at all, but a "sea" of white gypsum,

and the vast and most impressive Carlsbad Caverns, which is in essence, a mountain that had been hollowed out by Mother Nature.

We even saw aliens in Roswell, NM. :)

We saw the beauty, and awe inspiring vastness of the Grand Canyon.

We got a glimpse of the old days and what the folks of our parents generation experienced when they were moving along the Mother Road, aka Route 66, a long straight two lane highway rolling across the vastness of California's Mojave Desert, when leaving the Oklahoma dust bowl of the 30's on the way to the promised land of Los Angeles, CA.

We pulled our travel trailer over 7,942 miles.  We had a wonderful trip and experience, saw things we'd never seen before, visited family along the way, but were mighty happy to get back home.

Would we do another big trip?  Yes.  All the way to Los Angeles?  No.  The next big trip should include Yellowstone National Park, which could come as soon as next spring/summer.

I'd be remiss if I didn't show a picture of our other traveling companion.  Duffy was a trooper.

And at times, we did slow down long enough to smell the flowers.

Until next time, so long.

PS: I would urge everyone to explore this great nation and it's natural beauty, before you are at the point you physically can't.

REVISED 7/21/14.  Added a picture.  Changed some grammer.

040514 We're in Michigan, after a stop over at Elkhart, IN.

We left Hannibal, MO on April 3rd, crossing over the Mississippi.

A quick drive up to Quincy, IL landed us on US 24. This was just a routine crossing of IL on the back roads.  Pretty much the same country side as one can find in many states of the east, except for the wind driven electric generator.

We drove much longer than I really wanted to, 7 hours this day.  But, I wanted to get to Elkhart, IN in order visit the RV/MH Hall of Fame and Museum and still get to Ypsilanti at a reasonable time, where we are going to have a visit with our daughter and son in law.

We got to the Hall of Fame relatively late, and after dark.  The building and grounds are not well lit or marked.  I ended up have back up the truck and trailer in the dark in order to make the turn I needed to.  We finally got parked and settled in for the night.

The next morning we did tour the museum.  Note the remnants of snow.

It was a good visit.  It's very interesting to see the evolution of recreational vehicles, from shapes, sizes, types, and amenities.

This is the forerunner of the Airstream.  When Wally Byam took over, the changed the boat tail rear, and moved the entrance from over the tongue to the side.

Here is the first travel trailer hooked behind a Model T.

There were early tear drops which look and function just like the modern teardrops.

Many of the early appliances are home type, and the heaters are oil fired Duo-Therm's with a metal chimney out the roof.

You are going to have to trust me about the oil heaters and the early tent trailer, which were basically a platform with a large fold out tent on it.  A lot of the images I took aren't working.  I see them on the camera, but I can't transfer them.

In any case, after leaving the museum at Elkhart, we took IN 17 north a few miles until we reached US 12 which we took east to Ypsilanti.

Some leftover snow on the way to Ypsilanti.

We're spending time with family, just visiting.   When we leave Ypsilanti Monday morning, we're coming home, via the back roads of Ohio, and I77 & I64 through WV.  West Virginia is one state I don't want to drive the "blue highways".  Should be home on Wednesday.

040214 We Found Mark Twain.

The brilliant writer and humorist Mark Twain, aka Samuel Clemens, certainly put the small town of Hannibal on the map.  Currently, his name is darn near keeping the city afloat.  Tourism is the main industry, aside from the cement plant and every business either has his name or a character closely related to him in the title.  Can't blame them though.

These are two examples.  Three or more restaurants carry his name, as does the RV park we're staying in.  If a business doesn't carry his name, it'll have a likeness of Mark Twain in its window.

I will say they have done the Twain museum well.  There is the main museum shown in the 1st picture above.  There is also an interpretive center which used to be the main museum.  Plus the childhood home of  Sam Clemens and other buildings associated with Clemens boyhood life in Hannibal.

Across the street from Clemens home is the childhood home of Laura Hawkins who is Becky Thatcher in the Tom Sawyer novel.

Of course, the Tom Sawyer character is largely based on Mark Twain as a kid growing up in Hannibal, MO. The exploits of a few of his friends are also mixed into Tom Sawyer.  The Museum Foundation has reconstructed the home of  Tom Blankenship who was the inspiration for Huckleberry Finn.  However, this is probably in much better condition than the house Tom Blankenship lived in at the time.   From all I've read, and from reading Huckleberry Finn, Blankenship/Finn were from the lower socio-economic scale in Hannibal.  Samuel Clemens/Tom Sawyer, on the other hand, would probably be middle to upper middle class since Sam's dad was a lawyer.

Samuel Clemens father, who was a lawyer and justice of the piece, died while he was a boy.  His office was the only one that needed to be moved in order to complete the Hill Street complex of Twain related buildings.  We thought the admission fee was a good deal.

We are staying at the Mark Twain RV Park.  Associated with the park is the Mark Twain Cave.  This cave was originally discovered in 1820, and all the kids around Hannibal, including a young Sam Clemens, would explore in this cave system.  It figured greatly in Mark Twain's novels.

Obviously these caves are no match for other caves we've seen, especially Carlsbad Caverns.  They are note worthy because of who used to explore them, and because they are a back drop to a lot of Twain's stories. We thought the cave admission was a bit high for value received.

Here are a few more shots around Hannibal.  There is a steamboat sightseeing cruise but it didn't operate today.  Our luck continues on missed extra excursions.  In San Antonio, the river boats didn't operate the day we were there due to cold weather.  The cruise people do have a scheduled "cruise" tomorrow, but we will not be here.  We'll be crossing the Mississippi to Illinois.

There is a great spot to view the city called Lover's Leap.  An image of the city, then a view up river, and down river follow in that order.

We ate at the Brick Oven, which is not to be confused with the Brick Oven in Ashland, VA.  This Brick Oven uses wood fired brick ovens to cook their pizza.  The pizza was very good as was the Italian beer.

All in all, I'm happy we stayed and visited the city.

We'll be traveling the next two days.  We plan to cross over to Illinois tomorrow,  followed by Indiana to Ypsilanti, MI the following day.

See every one then.

Revised 4/20/14.  Minor corrections.

040114 "Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."

You would be correct Dorothy.  Out of Kansas and headed to Hannibal, MO.  We decided to look for Mark Twain after all.

We traveled from Kansas City, Kansas to Hannibal, MO along US24, a mostly 2 lane road, through rolling countryside.  It is rural farm country with a few small towns along the way.

This will be a pretty mundane blog post.  Motored across Missouri to our new digs for 2 nights.

The only excitement was vying for that last parking spot at the RV park.  Or NOT.

This RV campground opened today for the new season.  We're their first paying guest for the season.  Seems strange to be the only RV in a camp ground.

We spotted the Mississippi River on the way to the RV park.  This is the first time we've laid eyes on Old man River since February 28 when we crossed it on the way to Bossier City, LA.

We'll continue looking for Mark Twain tomorrow.  Some folks are saying he goes by the name Samuel Clemens.

PS:  Welcome to the east.  I know we've left the great southwest because it currently raining and there is  supposed to be lightning and thunder tomorrow, our sightseeing day.  Oh well.

033114 Looking for Toto

Yes, we're in Kansas now.

We've put a lot of miles, almost 1,200, on The Traveling Koala since we left the Grand Canyon and the last blog.  We left the Canyon on 3/28/14 traveling back down AZ 64 to I-40.  This shot is of the San Francisco peaks, just north of Flagstaff.  Mary shot this from the car while on I-40 between Williams and Flagstaff.

This shot is Humphrey Peak, part of the San Francisco peaks, the highest point in Arizona, over 12,000 feet.

On the way to Kansas, we first stopped at Meteor Crater, located just off I-40 east of Flagstaff.  It's fascinating to see, and really large, over 500 feet deep, and 2.5 miles around the rim.  One example given to help vizualize the size is 10 football fields will fit on the floor, and stands for over 2 million fans could be built on the circular wall of the crater.

This first image is looking back towards the San Francisco peaks at Flagstaff.

 These next 3 photos are of the crater.

After leaving Meteor Crater, we traveled on over to Holbrook, AZ where we jumped off the interstate in order to visit the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert.  The neat thing about this national park is 1) it's about 28 miles long, with a single road running through it, 2) it terminates further east on I-40 which is the way we were headed.

The petrified wood made some pretty designs.

There was other interesting terrain to see while driving through the park.  Like most of the national parks in the southwest US, it was dry, many times stark, but beautiful none the less.

There were also the ruins of a Native American band who lived along side the Rio Puerco back during the period 1200 to 1300 AD.  The river carried much more water then and the people raised a lot of different grains and vegetables.  The stone foundations of many of their buildings remain along with a number of petroglyphs.

Coming up is the depression of the old Route 66 and telephone lines that were eliminated with the opening of I-40.  The Mother Road and the old Santa Fe Railroad used to run through the park.  The Santa Fe still does, but is now is the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, owned by Warren Buffett.  Route 66 disappeared, to be replaced by I-40. 

After passing over the extinct road bed of US 66, we now rolled through the Painted Desert.  Again,  great pastels were used.

Duffy liked this park since the Ranger said our "doggy friend" was welcome on any trail as long as he was on a lease and stayed on the trails.

After leaving the Painted Desert we drove to Gallup, NM and spent the night.

We rolled out of Gallup early enough on the 29th for Mary to catch a sun rise.

We stayed on I-40 until reaching Tucumcari, NM.  Here we left the mind numbing interstate and got back on the "blue highway" US54.  (Side note:  I've referred to the non interstate roads as blue highways.  As anyone can see today interstate routes are always colored blue.  In the "old" days the back roads on maps were colored blue.  William Least-Heat Moon wrote a book called "Blue Highways" about his travels across America on the back roads.  That name has stuck when referring to non interstates, at least among many RV'ers )  It's path is a diagonal from Tucumcari, to Dalhart, TX.  Interstates are great for getting from point A to point B quickly.  Not much else good can be said for them.

Then on to the Oklahoma panhandle town of Guymon where we spent the night at Camp Wally World (Walmart). 

The Panhandles' business is cows.  We went by two vast feed lots.  Even Ray Charles would have known we were traveling by these feed lots.  We had the AC on recirculate and we STILL knew it.

We shoved on from Guymon, OK on the 30th.  We pushed it this day.  Drove for nearly 8 hours.   Pulled into the camp ground at Louisburg, KS.  It's about 32 miles south of Prairie Village, KS.  We stopped here to visit family, our daughter in laws' parents.  Spent a great day with them today.

After dumping (one of the necessary but least pleasant chores connected with RVing) in the morning, we'll head out for Hannibal, MO on US24.   We may or may not stay over and look for Mark Twain.

If we don't stay in Hannibal, we'll be off the wifi grid until we reach Ypsilanti, MI.